This evening we played through an episode that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Tonight we did episode 6, a scenario where our heroes had to try to convince the leaders of the metallic dragons to join the council in the fight against the cult of the dragon.

The Watcher

When I got to the store, I learned of a wrinkle. We had... a watcher.

You've probably had this experience. A friend of a player is in town and doesn't want to play - they just want to watch. In my experience, the watcher almost always ends up as a distraction.That's mostly because watching D&D is really boring. I always try to get the watcher to play an NPC with simple stats, mostly just to keep them from being a problem.
 
If you remember last week, Dark the Dragon Sorceress made friends with a mezzoloth assassin. I had the watcher play him. This worked pretty well. The watcher was still a bit of a distraction, as he was young and had to be taught table etiquette.

This episode is super-short. It just lists the five dragons, who they are and what they want. It's up to our heroes to negotiate with them. The DM is left to "unpack" and flesh it out.

The Party  

•     (Harper) Elf Sorcerer: Played by a 4th grader, she is Dark the Dragon Sorceress   
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
•     (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.

Arveiaturace

Our heroes flew on the back of the silver dragon Elia aka Otaaryliakkarnos. It's a two day journey. I had a pair of chromatic dragons attack, so that the adventurers could have a pretty epic battle on the back of a silver dragon. I used a red dragon (Thraxata from the first assassination attempt) and Arveiaturace, the insane white dragon mate of Arauthator. Dark and our paladin figured out who Arveiaturace was very quick. I was very impressed!

The battle was ok. I have learned now to always start dragon fights with frightening presence. Leading off with the breath weapon is deadly, but at this level the PCs have a lot of ways to mitigate the damage. They slew Arveiaturace and Elia killed Thraxata.

The Metallic Dragons

There's five dragons of different shades: gold, silver, bronze, copper and brass. I was worried that this open-ended scenario would bore the group, but they were quite engaged with it.

Obviously the first issue they had to overcome was the fact that the group has a baby black dragon with them. It actually says in the text that one of the dragons believes that all metallic dragons are made in the image of Bahamut and thus they must be good, which means that they believe that all chromatic dragons are in the image of Tiamat and therefore must be evil.

How did the heroes overcome this? Dark's dad asked Sparky, the baby dragon, to offer the metallic dragons his hoard. Sparky has been collecting stuff like beer coasters in a little sack. What a great idea. The metallic dragons were shocked to see a chromatic dragon do something so selfless. They decided to go ahead and meet with the heroes.

There was a nice bit of debate which never dragged. The heroes had to make some concessions in order to get the dragons to join the council. It went like this:

Gold Dragon: Was promised a share of Tiamat's hoard and an apology from the elves for the dracorage mythal (basically, it's a spell that the elves had used in the past to cause the dragons to periodically go insane and battle each other).
Brass Dragon: Was promised a share of Tiamat's hoard.
Silver Dragon: Was promised an apology from the dwarves for slaying a silver dragon during a "dragonmoot" (a dwarven dragon hunt).
Bronze Dragon: Was promised a share of Tiamat's hoard.
Copper Dragon: It turns out a PC had a dagger of venom stolen from her hoard. The PC, our gnome who likes trash, graciously gave it back along with some gold.

The metallic dragons were so impressed that they gave the PCs three arrows of dragon slaying.

Captive Cultist

I modified this "drop-in" encounter from page 7. Dwarves have captured a high-ranking cultist but are in peril. Our heroes are flying on the silver dragon and see a few dwarves being chased by an army of cultists. The heroes first had to convince Elia to help the dwarves (she doesn't like them). The dragon scattered the army while our heroes defended the dwarves from some ogres and a half-red dragon.

I felt like this didn't challenge the PCs enough.

Death at the Council 

This is another drop-in encounter that I modified. It is supposed to be an encounter where the heroes can follow a trail of clues to discover that a succubus agent of the cult is seducing and murdering council members.

The Yawning Portal

My group is a little young for seduction, so I overhauled this. I had an incubus secretly kill Leosin the monk and replace him. When the heroes returned to Waterdeep, "Leosin" takes them to the Yawning Portal bar for drinks. The idea was for him to charm a PC subtly and make him attack the others, then summon barbed devils to do the rest. It's another assassination attempt.

To try and throw the PCs off the scent in a meta-game way (after all, why do I have a poster map of a bar on the table and why are we playing out this innocent night out on the town unless there's an encounter?), I placed another group of adventurers in the bar, drunk. This way, the meta-game players might think the intent of this encounter is to have a barfight with rival adventurers and will be caught unaware when the subterfuge takes place.

For the other group, I used heroes from another DM's campaign, Australia's own Merric Blackman. The heroes:

Flint - Paladin
Mordacai - Fighter
Music - Tiefling bard
Ice - Ice sorceress (she casts ice spells. Dark immediately sensed she was a rival!)
Darius - Monk
Kai - Warlock

The heroes were drunk, and music was warbling loudly off key. The heroes took the bait and began to interact with them. "Leosin" charmed the gnome rogue and summoned the barbed devils with a consumable charm.

The PCs loved the bar fight that they had in Hoard of the Dragon Queen and were overjoyed to play through the sequel. Here's some of the highlights:

• A barbed devil tried to slide the gnome down the bar, but Dark saved him and slid the devil down the bar instead.
• A devil pummeled the mezzoloth with a stool, rolling a critical.
• A devil used hurl flame with a shot glass to create an enhanced jet of fire.
• A devil swung on a chandelier and dropkicked people. The paladin pulled him down..
• Dark's dad and the fighter continued to drink, watching the battle, bemused. Dark's dad bet the fighter 10 gold that he could jump up on the chandelier, cut the chain, and drop-stab the devil. He did - the devil was killed.
• A devil tossed the poor gnome into the bar wall lined with liquor. Then a devil used hurl flame to shatter the liquor, igniting it and causing a massive explosion. The gnome jumped into a trash can for safety, and like in the infamous Indiana Jones refrigerator scene, the can was hurtled across the bar and the gnome stepped out unharmed (his thief abilities pretty much staved off all of the damage).
• As the place burned, the other elf rogue grabbed Music, the drunken tiefling bard, and carried her out to safety. He gave her a potion of healing. He asked me if she could join the party. I doubt that, but I'm sure we can do something cool. I doubt the other party would like the idea of this group "stealing" the bard.

That's where we left it. The heroes questioned the wearer of purple that they'd rescued from the dwarves. She told them all sorts of things, including some details about the blue dragon mask and a dimensional hedge maze, which we will get into next week.

This article is a compilation of things I've learned about handling NPCs in Dungeons and Dragons from running games over the years. Some of these ideas might not work for you. Everyone has their own style. Obviously, do what you feel comfortable with.

I am using art from Pathfinder and D&D artist Eva Widermann in this column. She's pretty awesome and very overlooked, in my opinion.

Resources

This is stuff I use to help cook up NPCs:

• Auto-refreshing Name Generator 
• The Chris Perkins NPC Name List
• List of 1,000 Personality Traits
• Hireling Generator
• Column by Chris Perkins on NPC Motives

 Non-Player Characters

An NPC is a non-player character - an individual not controlled by the players. The Dungeon Msater controls them. They are bartenders, elves in the forest, sea captains, villains, you name it. In this article, I am going to focus on friendly NPCs for the most part.

Let's kick this off with a couple of things that, in my opinion, you want to either avoid doing or exercise extreme caution if you go for it:

Mis-step #1: Using Your Old PCs As NPCs
 
Often, new DMs really love the idea of having their characters from other campaigns show up in their own campaign. Sometimes, the campaign even revolves around your old PC and the stuff he or she did.

This generally doesn't go too well. If you want to play, be a player. Your campaign should be about the exploits of your players, not a celebration of your hero. It doesn't take much to get the players to start to resent your old PC, especially if he's some legendary hero that everyone talks about all the time.

Your PC could show up and make a cameo or something fun like that. But that's usually only compelling to you, the DM, and you also run the risk of the PCs trolling you by embarrassing or beating up your treasured PC.

In general, you should keep in mind that the stars of the campaign are your players, not your old PCs.

Mis-step #2: The DM PC

That brings us to the scourge of dungeon mastery: The DM PC. I bet most of you have a horror story involving this topic.

It might seem like a cool idea for you to run a character in your own game. Maybe you never get a chance to be a player and this is your best shot. Maybe the party has a role (healer, usually) that needs filling.

I have never seen a DM PC run well. Ever. The DM PC is often a super-badass with plot invincibility because, well, his player is the DM. The PC knows the answer to every riddle, has secret relationships with the world, and almost always has astonishing success in their romantic lives. The other players just roll their eyes and the campaign becomes "DMPC and His Amazing Friends".

The Support NPC

Here is my suggestion. If the party has a role that needs filling, make a "support NPC". They don't need full stats, just monster stats and a couple healing stats or class traits. The support NPC can be a loyal friend who you can use to give players clues when they get stuck, or to lead them to a secret door they overlooked.

The support NPC can also be linked to a particular organization or entity that you want to feature in your campaign.

The support NPC should never outshine your heroes! I can't stress enough that this game is about your PCs getting to be Indiana Jones. You are Steven Spielberg, not Harrison Ford. You run Short Round and the nazis. It's fun and fulfilling all on its own. Leave the player stuff to the players.

Have Random NPCs Ready
 
Coming up with NPCs on the fly is very hard. You should have a stockpile on them at the ready, either on a piece of paper or on your tablet or whatever. You don't need stats, just a few basic notes. You need enough to make the NPC stand out, that's all.

It happens quite a bit - the PCs suddenly want to pull a random citizen off the street or pick a fight at a bar or get to know their local potion dealer. At the very least, have a list of cool names ready to use.

Picking Names

When choosing NPC names, make sure to pick names that are easy to say out loud. Some names look good on paper but are very awkward to vocalize (I never liked saying "Driz'zt"). Try to find names that are cool and fun to say out loud, like "Ebonbane" or "Cataphract".

Joke Names: Be careful! Your players will make joke names if the opportunity arises. Make sure you don't name your epic campaign villain something like "Major Thrallstack", because your players will be giggling about different ways to shrivel "Major Ballsack" for months to come.

Variety: Players have a hard time keeping the names straight. Try to give your NPCs different types of names. Some might be referred to as a single word, such as "Ava". Others are always referred to in the full name, like "Phineus T. Greymantle". Another might be "Lady Shadowborn".

Make sure to try to use different first letters for each major NPC's name. If you have three NPCs named Sandra, Sandoval and Serindal, it might be extra tricky for your players to keep them straight.

Portraying an NPC


In general, your NPCs should be helpful and kind to the PCs. It is a common mistake for DMs to have most of the NPCs in the campaign world be stingy or cruel to the PCs. Remember, the PCs are special - they have status, they have wealth, they have power. They also likely have made the world a better place and the legends of their exploits are spreading. Most NPCs won't want to get on their bad side at all. Most NPCs will want to show their appreciation, through gifts of food or shelter, or a simple thanks.

I've said this before but it bears repeating - when the NPCs treat your PCs kindly, it makes the PCs love your world and want to keep it from harm.

Coming Up With Unique NPCs
 
Use Books and Movies: A lot of times, you might get an idea for a cool NPC from a book or movie. It is fine to rip stuff off, as long as your players aren't familiar with it. You should be up front about where you got the idea from, in case they stumble upon the source weeks later.

It's often best to take a cool character from a book, strip elements from it and modify it to make it your own. If the source is especially obscure, then you could take it whole cloth.

Developing Voices: You can also end up with a classic NPC through developing a new voice or accent. If you hear a cool or funny voice, imitate it. Work on it with friends or alone. It's OK if it's terrible, as long as it is fun to do. A character will grow out of it, and these characters usually end up becoming PC favorites because of how you have brought them to life.

A good NPC needs to feel real. If your players talk about an NPC between sessions, wondering what she meant when she said X, then you are doing a great job.

Threatening the Life of an NPC


You have to be very careful. If you constantly have bad guys kidnap the PC's favorite NPC, the players will begin to resent you and feel like you are using NPCs as a way to mess with the players. It can come off as "cheap".

The players went out of their way to make a connection with your NPC. Do not discourage them or give them a reason to feel that your NPCs are a meta-game "trap". Players should often be rewarded through investing time to build a relationship with an NPC. Your players need to be able to trust that you aren't trying to arbitrarily trying to screw them over at every opportunity.

Gender Equality
 
When I populate a campaign with NPCs, I try to make 50% of them male and the other 50% female. In my Skull & Shackles campaign, some of my players were taken aback when they saw that half the pirates on most ships were female. The traditional depiction of pirates in movies and TV is a bunch of sweaty dudes with anchor tattoos. But everyone took to the mixed-gender crews in a big way.

In general, it is very fun to switch up traditional gender roles in RPG games. We are living in a time when all of this gender stuff is still being ironed out, so it is a touchy subject.

I am a big fan of Ronda Rousey, the UFC women's bantamweight champion. It's very disheartening to see people make comments online that say things like "only idiots pay to see women fight".

For the record, up to 600,000 people pay to see each of Ronda's fights (at $55 a pop), and she was named the biggest box office draw of 2014 in the Wrestling Observer, which covers boxing, wrestling and MMA.

Sometimes in your games, the greatest fighter in the land should be a woman.

Sidekicks


Some of my most popular NPCs are the ones that come with the heroes - lantern-bearers, talking magic items and intelligent animals. I use these a lot to help guide the PCs when they get lost, to share lore they may have missed, and for comic relief.

Treat them with care! They will likely become a central part of your campaign. Henchmen and hirelings can be especially fun. Again, make sure to have these NPCs react realistically to the PCs.

Often, one PC will be a jerk to them. The hireling should avoid that PC or even flee the party if it turns into abuse. Conversely, a PC who treats the hireling well will earn enduring loyalty from the hireling, who might go on to great things (maybe the hireling ends up as the captain of the guard in a large settlement).

Secrets

Giving NPCs a secret, big or small, really goes along way in bringing the game to life. The secret can be anything from being a kleptomaniac, to being in love with the married neighbor, to being the cousin of the campaign's bad guy.

The NPC's secret should at times motivate them. The PCs might wonder why an NPC reacted in a peculiar way. Once the PCs uncover one secret, they wonder what else is lurking beneath the surface of your campaign. It gives your world depth and gets the players thinking about your game between sessions.

Garbage Magic Items
 
Your PCs "garbage" magic items - like, say, a +1 dagger or a potion of plant control, mean so much to an NPC in the game world. If a PC hands one off to an NPC, the NPC should use it in a way that affects the world in some way, big or small.

The potion might be used to create a special garden in the village. Or it might be stolen and used by someone to commit a murder.

The magic dagger might make the NPC a feared and respected entity. Rumor spreads that she has this magic dagger. Any altercation in the street would be settled just by the dagger being drawn, its' runes glowing brightly. After all, these mundane NPCs can only guess at the power inside of that magic dagger.

This will help convey to the heroes how special magic items, and how truly awesome their powerful items are in the campaign world.

The Usual Suspects

When developing your campaign or preparing for a session, there's certain types of NPCs that come up again and again:

Bartenders

Bartenders are tricky! Almost every bartender in every D&D game is a bald guy with an eyepatch who doesn't take any guff. It gets old after a while. Try something like:

• A bard who struck it rich with a hit song that everyone is sick of. He bought a bar and talks endlessly about his days as a big star.
• A dwarven lady who can out-drink and out arm-wrestle anybody. She knows more about booze than most.
• A retired pirate/sea captain with an utterly filthy mouth and maybe a magic parrot.

Town Guards

Don't make them all jerks! The town guards are trying to protect the town. At least some of them should be portrayed as noble and heroic, unless you're running a city that is vile and corrupt. You can have some jerks, but there should be some nice ones, too. Here's some examples:

• A master of polearms, a whiskery fellow who sneaks a drink now and then.
• A coward at heart who could become a hero with a bit of encouragement by the PCs.
• A detective-type with a keen intellect and incredible deductive skills with a trusty hound always at her side.

Potion Vendors/Town Wizard

• A shady orc selling stolen merchandise in an alley
• A wizard always experimenting with new spells and potions, and wants to use the PCs as a guinea pig
• A sorceress obsessed with dragons. She will pay handsomely for dragon parts like bones or a heart of a dragon. She may be a dragon in mortal form?

Clerics/Healers

• A kind and pure agent of goodness who adheres to every law, to a fault.
• A hefty, hairy fellow who is a best buddy, always ready with a joke or encouraging word.
• A woman who receives dreams sent to her by a divine source, or perhaps a trickster enemy.

Scumbags

• The town drunk, always picking a fight. Has a terrible past where a loved one was turned to stone.
• A member of the thieves' guild, eavesdropping on the PCs to learn of what treasure they've scored.
• A seductress trying to find someone to use and manipulate for social standing.

Rival Adventurers

One of my favorite tropes to use is the "other" heroes. They could be enemies of the PCs, or kindred spirits. These adventurers can go on adventures that your PCs bailed out on. Or they can go into a dungeon and save the PCs from a TPK.

The PCs might hear of their exploits, and see them building a stronghold. This could motivate the PCs to build their own, cooler stronghold. You can use the rivals to demonstrate the cool things PCs can do with their characters.

Don't Force a Favorite

Once you've got your NPCs ready, you'll probably have some favorites. That usually shines through when you run them, and the NPC becomes a major part of the campaign. But sometimes your pet NPC just doesn't click. Maybe the heroes just never even interact with them. That's part of the game! Sit back and see how it all mixes together. That's a lot of the fun of D&D.

Xonthal's Tower and the hedge maze

After a couple of shaky weeks, we had a good session of The Rise of Tiamat tonight at the game store. A player's dad has joined us permanently, maxing the table out at 7 players. For the rest of this season (which ends in a few weeks), he'll be playing the mezzoloth that the party befriended a few weeks ago. I cooked up some stats for him and gave him some cool magic items from the computer game Planescape: Torment, which I played quite a bit of while recovering from an illness.

Tonight we started episode 7, which involves an extra-dimensional hedge maze. I was concerned that the PCs would figure out the secret of the maze and fly right through it, but they found it quite tricky.

The Party

•     (Harper) Elf Sorcerer: Played by a 4th grader, she is Dark the Dragon Sorceress   
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
•     (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Mezzoloth: Played by the fighter's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.

The Third Council Meeting

We started in Waterdeep - it was time for the third council meeting. The council was none too happy with the heroes making so many concessions to the metallic dragons, including handing over a number of shares of Tiamat's Hoard. Dark's response to them? "Too bad!"

I linked Cheela, the cultist woman they rescued/captured last session, to Iskandar, the cult defector who needs extracting from Xonthal's Tower. Lady Laeral Silverhand gave the heroes some background on the wizard Xonthal, who is either long dead or a lich. Then they headed off.

The deal with this episode is that the PCs must pass through a magic hedge maze to get to the tower. In the tower is a cultist who supposedly wants to betray the cult and hand over one of the five dragon masks.

The Maze

Spoiler alert.. obviously. The maze works like this:

The PCs keep coming upon a sundial. It casts unnatural shadows which provide a clue as to which of 8 paths to take. Basically, the PCs need to go to the path between two shadows.

When they take the correct path, they come upon a sundial and eight paths with different shadows pointing in different directions. The heroes have to figure out 5 different sundial configurations to get to the tower.

Each time they take a wrong path, they come upon an encounter area. They will keep wandering into this area endlessly until they find a magic gem, which will allow them to return to the sundial to choose another path.

The solution to the maze is not at all obvious, so our heroes ended up quite confused. They went through each and every encounter tonight.

Chuul Pool: After finding the sundial and taking a wrong path, the adventurers came to a black pool with a gem hovering over it. The gem is needed to return to the sundial, though the PCs didn't know this. Dark cast water walk and touched the gem with her foot. 4 chuuls rose from the water and attacked. The heroes made quick work of them (I am noticing that monsters aren't much of a threat to the 12th level PCs... they take little damage and aren't hit often).

The heroes found treasure in the pool and freaked out about it. We ultimately decided to divvy up the treasure at the end, because the younger players were becoming unhinged with excitement. The heroes really got stuck on the sundial, and took the wrong paths over and over.

Cyclopes' Pasture:  I love this encounter! Basically, a cyclops chucks a boulder and challenges the PCs to make a boulder roll farther. The adventure suggests a number of solutions, both magical and mundane. Dark immediately used animate object to send the boulder rolling all over the place. The cyclops could only high five her in awe. I wish more of the encounters in here were like this.

Pagoda: I used this one next because it was the other encounter that I thought was really cool. A silent man makes tea for our heroes using a tea kettle with an angry face on it. The man is actually an earth genie, and the "tea" he is making will actually create a poison cloud! The genie's plan is to trap the heroes in a wall of stone, where they will suffer 30 rounds of poison damage!

But the genie was not prepared for our wacky young heroes. Dark was delighted to have tea with the guy, and she showed me how she drank the tea - pinky up. The paladin took a look at the herbs used in the tea, and recognized it as a foul concoction known as Drakeswort. The dashing rogue suddenly decided, on his own, that the kettle must contain the guy's soul and attacked it. He was right! The dao panicked! The heroes shattered the kettle and caused the genie to flee! Inside the kettle was a gem to return to the sundial.

Gorgon Maze: This is a maze-within-the-maze that conatains a gorgon! Dark was able to hypnotize the beast. The rogue was on fire tonight, perceiving everything. He saw that the gorgon's breath condensed into a diamond - the gem needed to return to the sundial. The heroes fled before the gorgon came to.

Carnivorus Garden: This encounter involves a fountain, animated flowers and some pearls. This one in particular I felt could have been really cool, but it's basically a combat. Too many combats in this place for my liking.


Statue Gallery: The heroes basically have to destroy 6 animated armors. Piece of cake.

The party had a heck of a time with the sundial. They eventually picked the right paths both by accident and by way of elimination.

The fourth sundial challenge involves spinning shadows. The solution is to actually stand on the sundial. I think you can see how this might frustrate some groups, but my players took it in stride.

The final sundial sequence is quite tricky - shadows point to each of the eight paths. The heroes have to walk into a hedge! They were stumped. I started to have their baby black dragon sniff a hedge, and immediately the fighter figured it out.

The heroes stepped through the hedge and were at the base of Xonthal's Tower.

I really enjoyed this maze. I wish I had changed some of the encounters to more role-playing kind of things, as the group really excels at it and some of the fights were boring. The animated armors in particular are just no match for the heroes and felt like a waste of time.

The store was packed and everyone seemed to be having fun. We are rocketing towards the final encounter with Tiamat, and then we will begin the new season - Elemental Evil.

I normally write about tabletop D&D, but today I'd like to write about the online MMO known as Neverwinter, which came out a little over a year ago. I tried it and liked it when it came out, but I moved on pretty fast (tabletop D&D takes up a lot of my free time).

Recently I realized that Neverwinter has released two Tyranny of Dragons expansions for the game - "Tyranny of Dragons" (not "Hoard of the Dragon Queen") and "The Rise of Tiamat". I thought about it for a minute and realized that I had to see if I could actually play through a version of the tabletop adventure online. How cool would that be? At the very least, there's probably new material in it for me to steal for my game.

I've played it. It really isn't a conversion of the adventures at all. But there are some elements and NPCs that overlap, which I really get a kick out of.

First, I am going to talk a bit about the actual Neverwinter game. Then I'll get into the Tyranny stuff and we'll see if there's any ideas we can use for the tabletop.

Playing Neverwinter

Neverwinter is an MMO - you run around killing monsters and leveling up alongside other real life people. It's an "action" game, where you control every swing of your sword. I use a guardian fighter, which means when I want to block an attack I hit the shift key to hold up my shield.

Once you hit level 60 (which is the highest level in the game, at least until next month when it is increased to 70), then you get into this whole thing where you try to acquire better suits of armor and weapons. You have a "gear score" which is a mathematical expression of how powerful you are. In some of the newer content, you need a certain gear score to even go to a specific zone (like Icewind Dale - I can't even go there yet. The pirate dude who is in charge of who gets to go keeps insulting my gear).

Freshly minted level 60 characters will have a gear score of around 9,000. The highest gear score I've seen is 24,000!

Seeing D&D Lore on the Screen is Fun

This is set in the Forgotten Realms, which is very cool. The city of Neverwinter itself is awesome. There's hovering earthmotes (an inn literally floats above the city) and a volcano is seen in the distance (Mount Hotenow, site of the first D&D lair assault - Forge of the Dawn Titan). It is so fun to play in a realm you've read about in the tabletop game.

Certain zones are pretty awe-inspiring. The first time I went to an underdark drow city, it felt really special. Drow cities are such an iconic part of D&D, I loved getting to creep through one with it's weird spires and purple light. When you fight a drider, it takes it to a whole new level.

Heading to the mind flayer realm

There is also a mind flayer zone. I felt like they didn't get it quite right. There is a cool feature where, to get to it, you have to pass through quasi-dimension with odd geometric shapes in it. But the place itself doesn't use enough actual mind flayer lore for my liking. I would have liked to see more of the concepts from The Illithiad in it like the illithid touch-script (qualith), brain golems and vibrissa-gauntlets.

I haven't gone through all of the content yet, but I'd also have liked to see more use of the Elder Brain and tadpoles. It seems like the developers just took some basic 4e mind flayer stuff and left it at that. Frankly it feels under-developed. You can't skimp on mind flayers.

The Economy of Neverwinter

A lillend, one of the coolest companions you can buy

The game has an utterly ridiculous economy. In order to stretch things out and keep you playing, you are supposed to spend your time trying to upgrade your weapons, artifacts and equipment. I find the whole thing a little insulting, but I do understand that there is only so much content and they need to find a way to keep people playing.

Neverwinter is free to play. In theory, you don't have to spend a dime. But they sure do try their best to get you to throw down some cash to circumvent their ludicrously time-consuming gear grind. There are literally dozens of types of currency. I am not kidding. Every module has about 4 types of currency. One type of currency sometimes buys another. Then that currency is used to buy module-specific gear. There's three main types of currency in the game:

• Zen: This is bought with real money. You can use it to buy the best mounts (who come in three speeds), companions (sidekick NPCs who are pretty essential, IMO) and assorted gear.
• Gold: You'd think gold would be the main currency, but it's not. It's got it's uses, but quickly you learn that the real main currency is...
• Astral Diamonds: These are not like the 4e AD, which are worth 10,000 gold each. When you buy stuff in the auction house, it's with astral diamonds, not with gold. NPC vendors sell the best gear for AD, not gold. There's even an astral diamond/Zen exchange, where you can spend vast amounts of astral diamonds for a tiny bit of Zen. I think it's usually about 400 astral diamonds for 1 zen. In the zen store, most things cost anywhere from 700 zen to 3,000 zen.

I spent some time reading up on "how to make astral diamonds" and there are these gigantic guides. Just glance at this one and you can see just how insane it all is. People have spent inordinate amounts of time on figuring out how to make a profit on a fictional currency. At some point when reading it through, you will likely ask yourself "why aren't these people putting this kind of thought into making money in real life?" Who knows, maybe they are. But it becomes very apparent that this all takes an awful lot of time.

Just as an example as to how you can make astral diamonds, one method is to create a bunch of characters (careful, you have to pay zen for more character slots), log in with each of them and "invoke". Invoking is basically praying to your god, who rewards you with stuff - mainly astral diamonds. It's the game's way of rewarding you for playing. You can make, I think, 2,400 astral diamonds per day, per character, just for invoking. All of this money can be shifted to your "main" character's bank account.

So there are people in real life who spend a half hour a few times per day, every day, who just log in with each character, invoke, and log out. You may think they're rich, but most of the good gear costs around 700,000 astral diamonds each in the auction house.

Astral diamonds are so important to your character that the game sometimes takes on a "stock exchange" feel. I spent a few hours playing through the same limited-time event "skirmish" (mini-adventure) because every 8th time or so, I'd be rewarded with a druid companion that I could sell in the auction house for 13,000 astral diamonds.

I'm also hemming and hawing because apparently once this event "skirmish" ends, the price of the druid may skyrocket. It did last year (apparently each one sold for 100,000 astral diamonds). Also, with a new module on the horizon, a lot of returning and new players/buyers will hit the market. Do I hold on to my druids for a few weeks to get a shot at a massive profit or do I sell them now for a quick turnaround? Fantasy adventure at it's finest!

Enchantments
You can acquire gear through adventuring, but it takes a very long time to get it. A lot of gear and items can and should be upgraded in the massive time suck that is known as refining and enchantments. Most gear has "slots" for you to put in magic, enchanted gems. These enchantments give you stat bonuses. Enchantments have levels, or "ranks". The weakest enchantments are rank 1. The best are rank 10.

If you want a rank 10 enchantment, you have to level it up. Usually you can find a rank 5 enchantment on a dead monster. Then you have to dump weaker enchantments into it, which slowly levels it up to rank 6. But to get it to actually level to rank 6, you need refinement stones and a ward and even then there's a percent chance that the attempt fails unless you use a coalescent ward which costs around 500,000 astral diamonds. It is ridiculous. To me there is nothing less heroic than going on quests to make money to buy a stone which might help my magic gem be ever so slightly more powerful.

But again, this is a way to make the powerful items feel truly special and it keeps us playing. By making certain items so difficult to attain, it gives them a lot of social worth.

Also, the idea of magic enchantment stones is something that might be cool to add to your 5e D&D game. You've already got the rules for making magic items in the 5e DMG, you might be able to come up with some cool enchantment stones to embed into your PCs' items. When you consider that magic items are much rarer in 5e (at least, they are in the published adventures), this might be a really fun way to work around that while staying true to the spirit of the game.

The Modules


Since the game has been released, there have been expansions, called "modules" (an appreciated nod to D&D):

• Fury of the Feywild - Yep, you get to go to the feywild in this game. The NPCs there have a mix of great and hilarious voice acting. There's a guy who starts off his speech with "Lady Winterwhite..." and the way he says it makes me laugh out loud every single time.
• Shadowmantle - This is a cool undead area teeming with Red Wizards of Thay, including Rath Modar from the tabletop adventure! I will be stealing the dome of Underwing and using it somehow in my Rise of Tiamat game for sure. There's also a quest to destroy a sphere of annihilation by throwing a rod of cancellation into it, which is very usable, too.
• Icewind Dale - This area is still locked for me, until I progress further in the first two modules.
• Tyranny of Dragons - The Cult of the Dragon is spread out over a bunch of zones. Each one has a dragon for you to fight.
• The Rise of Tiamat - You actually go to the Well of Dragons and fight Tiamat!

I am still progressing through the Tyranny storyline, although I have actually fought Tiamat, which was insane. I am far too under-geared to do anything but get mauled utterly by the horde of rampaging devils that accompany Tiamat.

The Well of Dragons

The Well of Dragons in the game is depicted as a barren desert teeming with cultists and red wizards. The desert is pretty dull. Periodically, five "dragon heralds" of tiamat appear there and there's this huge train of heroes that races across the desert and slaughters them all (and I mean... slaughters).

Weirdly enough, my favorite thing about this zone is the use of the red wizards. One thing I really like is how the red wizards have different flunkies. They've got Thayan Infiltrators (mooks who throw daggers) and Thayan Iron Golems, which are big clanky monsters. The red wizards are also often accompanied by legion devils, who teleport on either side of you as the red wizard pelts you with spells.

I especially like how the red wizard illusionists can create mirror images of themselves. These mirror images are their own monster, that can exist permanently away from their creator. They are made of purple fire and they hover above the ground. I think that in the tabletop game, battling purple fire mirror images of Rath Modar long before actually meeting Rath is a great way to build up the fact that he is an important and anticipated figure in the game.

The Cultists

The cultists are utterly fantastic in this game. Neverwinter handles them like the hack and slash blog did - the cult is split into colors, and each color has their own power/gimmick. They are awesome and you should definitely steal this! The cultists in the game:

Blue: Knights in blue armor with swords and shields. They can conjure these lightning shields for a few seconds that are impenetrable to harm. You have to run around behind the lightning shield to harm the cultist. Frequently these shields are used to protect their drake allies. Might make for a cool mechanic in the tabletop game.

Green: These ladies give me a lot of trouble. They have bows that fire off spells. They can create these roots that stick me in place, and then they fire off these charged green beams of energy that do a ton of damage. Basically, she sticks me to the ground and then the other cultists rush in and pummel me. It's horrible.

Black: These guys look quite like the cultists in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, except they can read these scrolls that enlarge them. Once enlarged, they do a lot of damage and are a real pain to defeat.

White: These knights have a really wacky attack where they spin and hit you over and over. As they spin, they emanate these ice orbs that freeze you in place if they hit you. I'd take out the spin but keep the orbs.

I assume there are red cultists, I just haven't met any yet.

The Dragons

The dragons in the tyranny of dragons module are awesome. At the very least, you can steal the names. The dragons look and sound really cool, and give you a great feeling as to how a D&D dragon fight can look and sound like. It makes sense to me that I end up always trying to get at the dragon's side to hack into it. You do not want to be by the tail or head!

In the game these dragons are fought in "heroic encounters". The dragon shows up every 20 minutes or so, heroes assemble, and usually a group of 10 or 15 adventurers rush the thing and have this epic battle. It's a lot of fun.

Steal the names: Charthraxis (Green), Merothrax (white), Venfithar (blue), Vartlingorax (black) Vilithrax (undead?)

NPCs We May Be Familiar With

Elminster

They could have used a lot more NPCs from the adventure and I wish they had. Maybe there's more, but so far I see no sign of Rezmir, Talis the White or Neronvain the Green.  Also, now that I think about it, Skyreach Castle would have been incredibly awesome in this game.

• Severin: He is the villain of the D&D tabletop Rise of Tiamat adventure, and he's in the MMO, from what I understand (cultists frequently shout "For Severin!"). I haven't faced him yet. He might have been in the Tiamat fight - I don't know, as I did that fight once but it was utter chaos and I was in way over my head.
• Sandesyl Morgia: This vampire is in your camp at the Well of Dragons. In the tabletop, she's in the final episode of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. My heroes made relatively quick work of her. In this MMO, she's aiding you against Tiamat. Whoever did her voice deserves $50,000. I could listen to her talk all day.
• Elminster: Elminster is at the camp! I don't think he's voiced by Ed Greenwood, which is an utter crime against humanity. Apparently the inclusion of Elminster is in response to player requests - they want to see more "famous" D&D NPCs in the MMO. This brings up the question as to why Elminster isn't just dealing with all of this himself, as he is insanely powerful and, if you recall, in one novel his girlfriend took down four pit fiends with her many hair-wielded magic wands. It's cool to see him in the game, I guess.

I would have liked to see more NPCs from the published adventures in the game. For example, in the MMO, harper quests are doled out by "Harper Windle". It seems like it would have been pretty easy to use Remallia Haventree from the adventure instead.

It also would have been nice to see the Council of Neverwinter, or in particular the metallic dragons. How cool would it be to get to meet a gold dragon in the game? As far as I know, the evil sword Hazirawn isn't in the game, either. That's a bummer.

Not Too Shabby

All in all, it doesn't seem like the MMO took advantage of the material in the tabletop version. I am guessing this kind of thing sounds easier to implement than it actually is. It's too bad though, because I think it would have helped create more cross-interest. At least, it would have for me.

It also doesn't help that the Neverwinter link page on the official D&D site is so dry. The first sentence puts me to sleep. Sell me on it, people! I can fight Tiamat in a computer game for free, why wouldn't I want to try that?! I should have the opportunity to adventure alongside Mike Mearls and Chris Perkins' characters. Heck, DMs who run the game in the store should get special loot in the MMO, am I right? Anybody?

If you are thinking like this game is worth a try (it is, in my humble opinion), you should know that in a month they are launching the Elemental Evil module in conjunction with the new D&D adventure! How cool is that? It's a great time to be a D&D player.

If you want to know more about Neverwinter, Sly Flourish has a great review of the game here.

We played another session of The Rise of Tiamat at the game store last night as part of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer's League program.

Something is happening to the group. Ever since that week where the substitute DM ran the game (the session where, I was told, "everybody argued") the players have very little patience for each other. Tonight's game started off very free and fun, but by the end I was really working to keep things moving.

With a home game, you're playing with people you know and that you've invited, presumably because they will make a good group. At a game store, it's just a bunch of people who show up. I got supremely lucky with group, as I really like them. But the age difference between the players seems to be causing problems.

The Party

•     (Harper) Elf Sorcerer: Played by a 4th grader, she is Dark the Dragon Sorceress   
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
•     (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
•     Mezzoloth: Played by the fighter's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.

Last week we went through the hedge maze. This week, our heroes had to make their way through Xonthal's tower, a weird and magic place. They are trying to find a cult defector who apparently has the blue dragon mask. They had spotted him on the tower balcony, who told them he'd wait for them in the dungeon and waved an hourglass key that they'd need.

The heroes come before a room with a teleport circle and a metal wall panel adorned with 9 symbols. Each panel has a different symbol: rectangle, a chair, fire, an hourglass, etc. When you press one, the teleport circle glows and teleports you to a room in the tower.

The adventurers all stared at it (I made a handout), and Dark immediately pointed out that the bad guy was waving an hourglass key, so they should probably press the hourglass button. She just sees right through the game a lot of times. Most people get lost in the details, but she is very sharp.

Pressing the hourglass is locked - you need to touch it with the hourglass key.

The heroes ended up pressing the star, and going right to the bad guy with the hourglass key. His flunkies had just 33 hit points. The heroes tore through them. Jorgen managed to get off a fireball, but most of the PCs have some way to mitigate or negate the damage completely. They killed the dude and got the key.

They used the key to go right to the dungeon.

Dungeon Teleporter: The room they appeared in had three dead bodies. Their defector, Iskandar, had killed them and fled further in.
 
Elemental Checkpoint: This is an area guarded by 2 earth elementals and a fire elemental. The deal here is that there's a locked box that has scrolls of protection against these elementals. I'm not really swure how the PCs could get them without battling the elementals. Invisibility, I guess, but not many people sneak in, grab the loot, sneak out, then kill the monsters.

They had no problem taking out these enemies. The adventure seems scaled way too low for my PCs.

Laboratory: This is an awesome room with a whirlwind that has 8 elemental gems floating in it. The adventurers decided to leave it alone.

Cosmic Hallway: I love this area! Basically they have to cross a bridge that passes through the cosmos! The heroes did a lot of testing and throwing things into space. Then they tied a rope to Dark and she crossed. A tiny meteor swarm came out of nowhere and she almost got knocked over the side, but she made her saving throw.

The heroes would come back here a few times, to throw green goo into the cosmos and for Dark, with a rope tied to her, to float out into space for a minute.

Storage Closet: Old, moldy spell components. Xonthal's been gone 100 years.

Time Chamber: The come upon Iskander's dead body. He has the blue dragon mask. Also in this room are two giant hourglasses. The heroes take the mask and try using it. They start to suspect it's a fake and begin debating what to do about it.

Dark really wanted to wear the mask but another PC had claimed it. She got a little upset about it and this is where the group started to unravel a bit.

Using Hazirawn's detect magic ability, the fighter saw that there were magic diamonds in the hourglasses. These are really cool consumables that let you teleport 30 feet. Handy!

The party debated more: Should we shatter the hourglasses? They didn't.

Taraz the Fair: This room has a fire genie in it. He is trapped in the room due to magic. A thin line of salt keeps him bound and he is desperate to be freed.

He has a chessboard and claims that Xonthal told him he could be freed when Taraz beats him at a game of chess. Dark was nice enough to play him in chess and lose on purpose. She really wanted to force the genie to be her servant.

Basically, Taraz will lie his face off to convince the PCs to free him. He hints stuff about granting wishes.

The group pretty much came apart at this point. Dark wanted him to be her servant. Others wanted to kill him. Others wanted to just leave the genie in the room.

Ultimately, they freed the genie. Then, for some reason, a rogue tripped him as Taraz walked out. The genie flipped out and the party begged Taraz not to attack him. The genie was allowed to throw the rogue around a little to regain his honor.

Taraz ultimately ditched the party with plane shift. I just wanted him out of there because this whole thing completely grinded the game to a halt. At that point I was in almost emergency mode, as the group had grown somewhat frustrated with each other and I wanted to get things back on track.

Also, while I had spent an hour or two making handwritten notes, I had gotten mixed up and confused a number of times while running this scenario. It was loud in the store and I was off my game.
 
The Dragon

The heroes exited the tower. A blue dragon was attacking the village outside the maze. It was Lennithon, the dragon they'd run into in the very first episode of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

The heroes got to the village, climbed on rooftops and fought the dragon. They lured it down by promising to hand over the dragon mask, and then unloaded on it. The dragon got off frightening presence and nearly dropped the fighter with a claw/claw/bite. It used wing attack to scatter and injure them. But when it tried to escape (it was bloodied quickly) the heroes finished it off.

We Are Almost Finished

The mask is a fake. This is the thing I hate most about these adventures - the masks keep getting dangled in front of the PCs but they can't actually get them.

This session started out awesome but kind of came apart as it went along. The tower itself is very cool. They missed a bunch of rooms that I really wanted to run - there's these black dragon bone. I was going to say they were the bones of Sparky's mother and have her ghost appear and tell the heroes the secret of Voaraghamanthar.

We're going to play on Sunday, and then we should finish the campaign next Wednesday!

These columns are being "syndicated" on a new site: Dungeon Channel. Dungeon Channel has all sorts of resources for Dungeon Masters, including maps, a dice roller and links. Check it out!

I had scheduled a bonus session of The Rise of Tiamat at the game store today. I could be wrong, but from what I understand, Elemental Evil starts on March 18th. So today I wanted to get through everything up to the final battle of the campaign. We will do that Tiamat fight on this coming Wednesday.

I honestly didn't feel like coming in to run this today. Today was daylight savings, which meant I lost an hour of sleep and I was exhausted. Also, the last few sessions haven't been stellar and my enthusiasm has waned.

It's funny, it's the times when I don't really want to go but drag myself in that end up being good ones. We've had horrid weather for months now in New York, but it is suddenly getting warmer and it put everyone in a good mood.

The Party

•     (Harper) Elf Sorcerer: Played by a 4th grader, she is Dark the Dragon Sorceress   
•     (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
•     Mezzoloth: Played by the fighter's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.

Dark's dad, a rogue, couldn't make it in today. His character was sent on a "special mission" by the Zhentarim.

Today I wanted to fly through episode 8, which is a nothing-chapter where the heroes go to Thay. Then we'd spend the majority of this session on the well of dragons (which is episode 9). In episode 9 according to the book, the heroes go through what looks like a really boring dungeon while a mass combat rages between the factions and the cult outside. I said "nuts to that" and revamped this final episode so that our heroes are out in the middle of a mass combat chopping their way toward the Draakhorn and the caldera where Tiamat's temple awaits. It went extremely well.

Fake Masks

Dark and another player were arguing last week about who got to keep the (fake) blue dragon mask. When they got back to Waterdeep, I had it so that a bunch of adventuring groups had found fake masks. This way, the PCs could each claim a mask and we could move on.

Gnome Treasure

Bahamut

I decided that since the gnome had pleasantly offered to give his dagger of venom to one of the metallic dragons (which is especially generous of him when you consider how rare magic items are in this storyline), I decided that the dragon would send an item to him as a thank you and an aid in the upcoming battle at the Well of Dragons. I looked through the DMG before the game and couldn't figure out what to give him. So I just had him tell me what he wanted at the table. He got a +2 bow.

The Polychromatic Dragon

I decided that word had spread among the metallic dragons that the PCs had a baby black dragon that was not evil. I did a thing where one of Bahamut's 7 gold dragons, Sonngrad the Wing, came and brought Sparky and some of the PCs to the plane of positive energy, where Sparky went through some morality trials and was infused with positive energy. Sparky is now half-black, half-gold. I did this partly because Dark asked me last week if Sparky could level up (his stats are pretty shabby now compared to the PCs, aside from the breath weapon that does 22 points of damage).

Thay
 

Rath Modar

The heroes then were teleported to Thay to meet with the Red Wizards. The Cult is allied with a splinter group of the Red Wizards, with the idea that Tiamat will help the splinter group oust the current leader of the red wizards, Szass Tam. The heroes tried to recruit the red wizards, which led to a few PCs being interrogated in their dreams, though they didn't remember it due to tough saving throws.

I added in a detail from the Neverwinter MMO. Each PC stayed in a room that had a ten foot tall statue of a red wizard holding his hands out. If a PC messed with it, an imp would have appeared and asked the PC what they wanted. The imp could keep an eye on them, and the whole thing is a way to show the PCs that messing with statues or stuff in their domain could have consequences.

The entire Thay chapter is a big nothing as written. I decided not to expand on it. We had stuff to do!

The Final Council of Waterdeep

I had Skyreach Castle show up, hovering over Waterdeep. It was time to decide who was going to attack the cult, and who the PCs had failed to win over.

Really there was only one faction with a beef. Going by the council scorecard, the PCs had scored a ton of points with almost every faction. But logic dictated that King Melandrach and the elves were out - the PCs had made them apologize to the metallic dragons for a past event, and most notably the heroes killed the King's son and chucked his severed ear at the King when they got back.

I also hinted that the heroes, half of whom are elves and actually grew up in the Misty forest, would not be welcomed back there by a large segment of the population.

The heroes had the key to Xonthal's Tower, and every faction wanted it. The PCs decided to just keep the key for now to avoid tension.

The Well of Dragons

That's Tiamat's Temple in the distance.

And with that, a great army was assembled and gathered far to the south, near the Well of Dragons. There were giants, treants, griffons, metallic dragons alongside soldiers and wizards from all of the different factions.

I had Laeral Silverhand give a quick speech - I stole a quote I love hearing from the Neverwinter MMO that I say out loud in a lady voice because it makes me laugh: "Diligence, vigilance and tenacity. This is the key to victory".

The cult is massed at the Well of Dragons, a caldera full of dragon bones. Tiamat's evil hell-temple has risen in the center. Outside the caldera are thousands of cultists and devils. Flying above the whole thing are dozens of chromatic dragons.

Our heroes spontaneously chose mounts to ride into battle:

• The paladin summoned a spectral elk and readied his lance that he'd bought long ago
• The gnome rode Sparky, the baby black/gold dragon
• Dark rode a gold dragon (!)
• The mezzoloth rode on a treant
• The elf rogue rode a griffon
• The fighter rode a warhorse

Their steeds chosen, they let out a shout and led the charge, kicking up a cloud of dust as they rampaged toward the evil cultists.

My idea here was to run some encounters amid the chaos of war. I rolled initiative for the bad guys, and also made a separate roll for a 'special' encounter. Each round, when I got to 'special', I'd consult my list of special things and picked one. The list had things like:

• A chromatic dragon swoops down and breathes on the PCs
• Leosin (the monk from Hoard episode 2) jumps into the fray and kidney punches one of the PCs' enemies.

I also had Music, the tiefling bard from Merric Blackman's group, with the heroes. I had her use a special song to allow the PCs to take a short rest in mere moments.

I had five encounters prepared. The idea was to hack through the enemy, to get to the caldera. The PCs need to pass through a tunnel to get to Tiamat's temple. But they see the red wizard Rath Modar with the Draakhorn, and of course they need to take him down first.

The Warm-Up Fight

The heroes battled 3 dragonclaws, 3 dragonwings and one dragonsoul amidst the cacapony of battle. I re-flavored them so that they were like the cultists from the neverwinter MMO - there were green cultists with bows that shot energy arrows, blue cultists with lightning shields, etc.

Also in the middle of the first round, the first "special" moment kicked in: A red dragon swooped down from overhead and breathed on the heroes!

As the battle raged, Dark cast animate object and brought ten broken weapons to life. I had no idea how cool this spell was. Her weapons chopped up bad guys left and right.

I was worried that this fight and the other fights would be too easy or too hard, but they weren't at all. It was pretty perfect, thanks in part to my failsafe NPC bard healer with them.

Once the PCs had killed the cultists, I ran a quick type of semi-encounter that I used to do in 4e all the time. Basically, they'd roll initiative, I'd give them a situation, and they'd say what they wanted to try. They'd roll and their die roll would determine how it went.

So there's a mass of enemies in front of them. Dark has the gold dragon breathe fire to trap most of them in a ring of fire. Some other enemies, black dragon-armored cultists, began reading from scrolls. This is also from Neverwinter - they read from the scrolls and become giant-sized.

A PC threw alchemist fire into the fire circle and torched the bad guys while the PCs killed the scroll-readers.

Naergoth Bladelord

In this chapter, there's an undead warrior named Naergoth. He is affected by sunlight, so I set this whole scenario at night. Basically, once the battle started, Rath Modar told Naergoth to hunt down the PCs and kill them. Rath created some spectral mirror images of himself to accompany Naergoth (special monsters I took from Neverwinter - they are monsters that look just like Rath Modar, but they are made of spectral purple fire, hover and cast spells).

Rath's mirror images sneered at Dark. She'd somehow charmed him in Skyreach castle way back when, and he vowed revenge. As this encounter got underway, a green dragon flew by and breathed on the heroes.

The adventurers took down the bad guys. They were hurt pretty bad, so Music played her song. I used this opportunity to have Dark's gold dragon go fly after the green dragon. As their wounds sealed themselves up, a new enemy came after them...

The Red Dragon

Yep, a red dragon swooped down for a full-fledged combat. The frightening presence really throws them for a loop. The paladin has some power that protects him and people close to him from it. Still, it was a good fight that felt deadly.

One thing that happened was that the mounts of the PCs were killed. The griffon dropped from the breath weapon. The treant caught fire. Sparky even almost died (he would have if he hadn't "leveled up" earlier).

Once they had slain the dragon, the heroes closed in on the wall of the caldera. They saw a path that led up the wall to a landing, where the draakhorn was placed. By it was none other than rath modar. To get to the path, the PCs would have to pass over an infernal summoning circle. As they heroes got close to it, Rath activated it. It summoned a...

Pit Fiend

I was worried that this would be too tough, so I had a frost giant pop out of the combat to help the heroes fight it. The fiend really did a number on the heroes, but overall it felt challenging yet not overwhelming. It's funny, AC 19 is hard to hit, even for 14th-level PCs.

Rath Modar

The adventurers made their way up the path. Rath Modar had ten, yes, ten spectral mirror images of himself, each able to cast magic missile. They formed a wall, stopping the melee PCs from closing in on Rath. Rath pelted the heroes with a fireball, but that spell doesn't work too well on my group.

The elf rogue took an epic leap over the line of images and hacked into Modar. It was a harrowing battle with magic missiles flying around like crazy. But thanks to the daring rogue, Rath was slain and his mirror images vanished.

They could secure the Draakhorn and then proceed toward and into Tiamat's temple where the ritual to summon Tiamat was taking place....

After The Game Was Over

I got to meet Dark's little brother. He's a fun little guy. He did one of those wacky things that I think only little kids do. He somehow dropped a school library book through the gate of a closed deli in the mall. And of course, the book needed to be in the school tomorrow.

I used to lock these gates all the time at one of my old jobs. You can lift them up a few inches off the ground. So I lifted it, he stuck his tiny hand through and got his book.

All in all, it was a good session and I look forward to the final battle on Wednesday.

Tonight we finished The Rise of Tiamat at the game store and had the big battle with one of the most famous D&D villains - The five-headed dragon, Tiamat.

Going in, I was keenly aware that even with reduced stats, Tiamat might be too much for my group which is comprised of 8th graders, a 9-year-old and a few adults. I had a bunch of fail-safes ready as I wasn't interested in running a slaughter (although sometimes fate just doles out a TPK due to dice rolls and player decisions). It turned out to be an incredibly deadly final battle.

I modified the final chapter greatly. I tossed out the entire lava tube dungeon from the book in favor of a bunch of mass combat encounters. I also completely overhauled Tiamat's Temple.

In the book, Tiamat's Temple is quite odd. There are red wizards enacting the ritual in 5 areas, each pertaining to a different chromatic dragon (red, blue, green, etc.). More red wizards are hovering 50 feet in the air above them, also enacting the ritual. Floating even higher still is their leader, Severin. I switched it up completely and used one of my favorite maps from the 4e Book of Vile Darkness.

Vorpal Squirrel?

I got to the store early and was given a most warm welcome by other players from other groups. They told me about their games (They are in episode 1 of Rise, about to battle Arauthator). They have a "vorpal squirrel" (??). It sounds pretty fun.

When the fighter's dad showed up, he had a gift for me - a massive stein depicting a knight battling a dragon. It is incredibly awesome.

I also picked up some Elemental Evil minis, just to see what they are like out of the box and to get the Neverwinter code (I am still playing the game quite a bit). The minis are OK. I enjoy using "official" things but it's hard to say that the 4 minis are worth $16. There's something about getting a duergar mini in a box that makes me never want to buy a box again.

The Rise of Tiamat: LeBron's Mix

For a Limited Time Only!

A player at the table was drinking Sprite: Lebron's Mix. I can only assume Lebron James spent months locked away in a laboratory with flavor-ologists to concoct a drink that truly tasted like Lebron. I really hope that the future will bring us more celebrity-flavored drinks. How about Charles Manson Premium Choice flavored Cherry Pepsi? Maybe some iced tea with a twist of Kim Kardashian?

The Party

•     (Harper) Elf Sorcerer: Played by a 4th grader, she is Dark the Dragon Sorceress   
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
•     (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
•     (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
•     (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
•     Mezzoloth: Played by the fighter's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.

The Well of Dragons

Tiamat's Temple

We jumped right into it. Last time, the heroes had killed Rath Modar and acquired the Draakhorn. A silver dragon tried to bring it to Skyreach Castle, which was hovering above the battlefield, but a red dragon attacked her. The heroes fended off the dragon with ranged attacks and even avoided being pushed off a cliff by zombie Azbara Jos.

The adventurers led a force of dwarves through the lava tubes, encountering a lone prisoner and some drakes fighting over humanoid meat. They emerged in the caldera. There were dragon bones everywhere. In the center of the area was Tiamat's Temple, freshly risen from hell. The picture I use here seems to be official, but never got used in the Neverwinter MMO or in The Rise of Tiamat (perhaps due to space issues?). 

Cultists and devils lurked here, the final line of defense. Chromatic dragons were in the air. The heroes charged in, accompanied by a host of dwarves, a frost giant, Music the tiefling bard, Leosin the Harper monk and a limping Sir Isteval (wielding Lawflame).

The heroes made quick work of some dragonfangs and devils, with the aid of a brass dragon. They entered Tiamat's Temple.

There, five red wizards were working altars to summon Tiamat. Tiamat's heads were not quite tangible yet, but she was becoming solid in a prismatic whorl. The deal here was that the PCs needed to shut down the altars, destroying the orbs on each one. Severin, his aide Galvan, and the red wizards tried to stop them.

Who is Galvan?

I added Galvan in. Galvan seems to be something of an odd trivia note in Tyranny of Dragons history. From what I understand, he's an NPC that had art made for him, but he got cut from the book. But just a week or two ago, wizards posted this blurb about him as if he is part of the storyline. This article series also called Varram (the white dragonspeaker) "Varramzord".

This battle worked out fine. The heroes tried to spread out, which didn't go so well. They messed with the altars and killed wizards.

Scaling Tiamat
 
They shut down the altars but Tiamat tried to force her way through the portal before it fizzled out. The idea here was to run a battle where the PCs need to keep Tiamat at bay until the portal peters out.

I had used the de-leveling guide in the book, but I had to further modify her stats to give the PCs a chance:

• I gave her 3 legendary actions instead of 5, so she could only breathe once per round.
• My Tiamat had 315 hit points, which seemed low (a pit fiend has 300) but this was almost too much.
• I dropped the static damage of the fire breath to 56 damage.
• +14 to hit is plenty! I was worried it was too low (for the big bad guy) but I don't think I missed a PC once.

Once the fight started, Tiamat dropped the fighter right away with three attacks. Then, at the end of the gnome's turn, Tiamat breathed on the party (who were mostly clumped together) and dropped the mezzoloth and the paladin.

For the rest of the battle, the players hid behind altars and frantically healed each other with potions. The frightening presence royally messed them up, as the save DC is so high (even when scaled down). The paladin's ability to handle that probably saved the whole party.

Dark decided to have Sparky fly up and breathe on Tiamat. Tiamat took one look at Sparky,  a baby black dragon infused with positive energy/blessed by Bahamut and was enraged at the sight of this "abomination".

Tiamat breathed poison gas on Dark and Sparky. Dark's dad is a rogue. He originally wanted to kill Sparky when the party found him. Over time, the heroes taught Sparky to share and freely give treasure to those in need. A few sessions ago, Sparky was able to impress the metallic dragons by giving them his "hoard" of beer coasters and trinkets.

Dark's dad ran over, jumped on Sparky, and took the poison damage, saving Sparky's life.

The fighter had been dropped right at the start of the battle, and since then had been healed with a measly potion of healing. He spent a few rounds huddled behind an altar, quaffing potions. Then he charged Tiamat and unloaded on her... and rolled at least one natural 20! He did a pile of damage, crossing the 315 hit point threshold, and thus forcing Tiamat to retreat into Hell.

The players cheered! They'd survived a ridiculously deadly battle. I read to them things that happened after it was all over. The hoard had to be divided up with the metallic dragons. The chromatic dragons fled, but tried to take some treasure with them.

I asked each of them to tell me what became of their heroes after this was all over. Here's what they said:

• The Fighter: Established a manor for his family. I think he is going to make other characters related to this one.
• The Gnome: He moved in to the hunting lodge from Hoard and retired.
• Daring Elf Rogue: He and Music the tiefling bard became mercenaries. They also stole some items from Tiamat's hoard and fled.
• The Paladin: He returned to his home village. He had been made fun of a lot while growing up. Now he wanted them to see who he'd become and rub it in their face a little. Then he wanted to sleep for a long time.
• The Mezzoloth: He went to live in a sewer (??) and ditched his tridents. He hated using those things.
• Dark: She went on a quest to find her parents (she told me Dark's secret origin!).
• Dark's Dad: After Tiamat died, he slipped away and left the party for good. He left behind one thing - a trinket that was all that he had left from his tragic family past. He put it in Sparky's hoard.

Pretty awesome, right?

The Secret Origin of Dark the Dragon Sorceress

Remember, Dark's player is 9 years old. This is her character's story: Dark's parents were named Jason and Allison. One day, they were riding horses in the woods with Dark (who was 4 years old at the time). There was "something in the bushes, wiggling". It scared the horses, who ran off. Dark was separated from her parents and was lost. A black dragon found her, and decided to raise her (maybe he sensed her dragon sorcerer blood?). Years later, a band of adventurers came and killed the black dragon, thinking Dark was it's prisoner. These adventurers might be Harpers. They took Dark in and raised her as their own.

I think that's a pretty well thought out backstory, if I do say so myself!

It was a great final session with a great group. We're starting Elemental Evil next week. I'll try and finish up my guide to Tyranny of Dragons, now that I have run the whole thing,

This week, we begin a brand new Dungeons & Dragons storyline in the game store. We finished The Rise of Tiamat last week, and now we begin Princes of the Apocalypse as part of the Elemental Evil storyline.

The book isn't actually out yet. A .pdf of the Encounters version of this adventure was released just a day or two ago. I promptly prepared about 25 pages of it with hand-written notes. Honestly, I wasn't overly-impressed with this adventure, but I still have a lot more reading to do.

I wanted to complete part one tonight, which contained three scenarios:

• A single bandit encounter
• A very short tomb scenario
• A small dungeon of a necromancer

The adventure kicks off in a town called Red Larch. The PCs are just kind of plopped there, with no real event or story. The idea is to let the PCs roam and explore and come upon the hooks naturally, but my players don't do well with that (they're young, so that stuff ends up a bit chaotic).

What I didn't expect was that my group of 7 players ended up at a total of 9, which is way too many and not even legal for Adventurer's League play. One new player was a friend from school of another player. How could I turn the poor kid away? The other player is in a group that took a break this week. He is around 50 years old and.. well.. you'll see.

The Party

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck".   
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler.Likes to make puns.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler.Seems to be interested in playing evil characters.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. He rolled poorly tonight.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: A new kid. He was a very nice guy.
• Human Wizard: A middle-aged man who usually plays in another group in the store.

"Bad Luck" Has Bad Luck

We began in Red Larch. I dropped the hook on them almost immediately - Constable Harburk wants the PCs to check out some bandit activity. Our heroes head to the south.
 
The adventure encourages you to use random encounters. I cooked up some of my own, mostly because the random encounters in the book that I liked involved cultists, and I wasn't sure if it would be wise to introduce the cultists this early. This adventure slowly reveals the cultists. They are lurking beneath the surface of things.

Bursa Steel

So, since these early stories end up with a link to the earth cult, I created a number of flavor-encounters involving weird earth happenings. For example, there was a tremor that knocked the heroes prone if they failed an easy DEX save. They also ran into a dwarf who was looking for ancient mines, allowing me to drop some lore about these Ironstar dwarves that are relevant to a later scenario.

I named this dwarf Bursa Steel. A few weeks ago, I had the NPC name "Bursa Sac" pop into my head. I could slowly introduce his relatives - Aunt Nap (Sac), and build up to the debut of his crazy cousin "Crap" Sac. Stupid? Yes. But it makes me laugh. I realized that this was not appropriate for young kids, so I just kept the name Bursa.

The Bear

When preparing, I was worried we'd get through all of this too fast. But with nine players, we got through much less than I'd hoped. Nine is way too many, although they were remarkably well-behaved.

The bandits have a bear in a cage. The heroes jumped the bandits. The bear burst out of its cage and attacked the nearest creature - Lucky and her cat!

The nine-year old who played Dark the Dragon Sorceress last season now has a rogue named Lucky. She owns a black cat named "Bad Luck". Poor Bad Luck got murdered by the bear. Lucky got revenge by "putting a dagger in its' eye", killing it.

Raise Dead on a Cat

The heroes returned to Red Larch, victorious. Lucky really wanted the harpers (she's a harper) to raise her dead cat. I immediately got a vision of a D&D version of the Pet Avengers but I haven't figured it all out yet. She also suggested that the cat has nine lives, which is a really fun idea.

I did have the harpers raise Bad Luck, I'll have to mull it over and figure out how I want to handle this. The factions are supposed to only raise PCs, not their useless pets.

The Lost Tomb

The heroes then dove into hook #2, a scenario involving a lost tomb. There's bandits near the tomb, a fun duo - a goblin and a half-ogre. I had the goblin ride the half-ogre, and decided they were the best of friends. I used the new elemental evil ogre mini, which impressed everyone.

The heroes made their way into the tomb, triggering the noisy trap the duo had set to alert them. As the PCs battled a specter, the duo burst in from behind and did some serious damage. Lucky was dropped by the specter and the bard was dropped by the half-ogre.

New Guy Doesn't Play Well With Others

It was during this battle that the new guy pulled a classic jerk move. He decided to cast thunderwave, a spell that hits everyone within 15 feet of him. The players were taken aback as this guy set it up and they realized it would hit two PCs. He was semi-apologetic but I detected no small amount of glee in his explanation as well.

I let it happen for a few reasons. I'm not sure what the league rules are about this kind of thing, so I didn't want to tell him no if there isn't a specific rule in place (I think there is, but I didn't have the guide handy). Second, I wanted my young players to experience this kind of player, both as a deterrent and as a springboard for me to talk about it with them next week.

The worst part here is that this guy could have risked an attack of opportunity and moved to a position on the map where he'd only hit the half-ogre and not his own allies. That would have been daring and heroic. But instead he acted like his only recourse was to, "regrettably", hit everybody. Risking an attack of opportunity would mean he might take damage! Better to damage other people's characters, I guess.

He was quite dejected when everyone made their saves and he rolled minimum damage: 2 points. This is a grown man.

The heroes survived and healed their fallen allies. They then proceeded to leave the coffin alone and failed to find the treasure hidden in the tomb (I hate missed treasure but we had to keep things moving).

Lance Rock

The next day, the adventurers checked out the weird happenings at Lance Rock - a really tall, mysterious stone. There's signs warning people to stay out of a cave, signed "The Lord of Lance Rock".

Inside the nearby cave tunnel/complex, the heroes battled a zombie. It's funny, one 22 hit point zombie is not too shabby.

Then in the next room, there's two zombies poised to drop stones on the PCs from above, but the heroes were cautious and avoided the trap. They killed the zombies, and then we were completely out of time.

We just had too many players this week. Next time, we'll finish the necromancer's dungeon and start a pretty cool excursion into caves beneath Red Larch.

It was extremely cold here in New York today. I figured that meant that nobody would be at the game store and that we'd have a nice quiet session of D&D. Who wants to go out and brave the cold, right?

It turns out that everybody does. The store was packed with giddy players. It was a bit rowdier than usual tonight, both in the store and at my table. Nothing too bad, but I didn't expect it.

We had a visit from an old player. You may remember Hack and Slash Guy from D&D Next fame. He showed up to play, but the tables are full. This is an ongoing problem with the encounters program. There needs to be a "newb" table going in the store at all times, in my opinion. The problem is that players hate stopping at level 4 and starting over at level 1, so all of the tables are high level and deep into Hoard. We need one more DM to show up and to be ready to run for new people.
 
Here's where the other tables are after about 18 sessions:

• One table is in Hoard episode 3. I assume they are doing only one encounter a week? My players were stunned when they found out about this.
• Another table is in Hoard episode 4. The DM is creating side adventures on the caravan journey.
• The table run by the store owner is in Hoard episode 6.

I don't like going slow. I don't like it as a player or as a DM. I want to get through all of Tyranny of Dragons by the time the new season hits.

Our heroes are on the trail of one of the 5 wyrmspeakers. He's an evil dwarf with the White Dragon Mask. He may have lost the mask. Our heroes have tracked him to an Indiana Jones D&D location called the Tomb of Diderius.

5. Well Chamber

This room didn't have much in it. Mostly it has a mechanism that brings water to the room with the magic divination pool in it. The heroes were ultra-cautious in here. In fact, they were super-cautious in the whole dungeon tonight. They played very smart. I bet they'd even have excelled in Gary Gygax's Castle Greyhawk playing the way they did tonight.

4. Mosaic Chamber

Back in the room where the tile-chimera was, they tried some double doors and triggered a collapse. They were smart and pulled the doors open from a distance with a rope, so they took no damage at all.

6. Hallway
 
This was one I was very excited about! It's a downward-sloping hallway with a pressure plate. When the plate is stepped on, a boulder made of skeletons rolls down from behind the party. PCs are not only squashed, but if they fail their save they are also pulled into the boulder! It crashes at the bottom, doing more damage. Unlucky PCs will take a total of 64 damage!

As they checked out the hallway, Dark the dragon sorceress peered in, looking for traps. The DC for the plate is a 22. She rolled a natural 20, but she has a -1 on the check. There was literally no way for her to make the check. I am often very lenient, and in many cases I'd just have her succeed when she rolled a natural 20. But in this instance, the trap was too awesome. I couldn't throw this encounter in the garbage!

So they went down the hall and the paladin, the gnome rogue and poor Dark all got gobbled up by the boulder and crashes at the bottom. Dark was nearly killed instantly. A PC healed her to consciousness and looked around. They were in room 7...

7. Throne Room Antechamber

This room has tapestries and smells like incense. Behind the tapestries are 6 alcoves with mummies in them! The mummies only attack in the PCs poke them, or if the PCs don't open a set of double doors in the room in a certain way.

I kept mentioning the tapestries, and nobody would investigate or look behind them. They focused on the door and figuring out the clue to it. They did a great job with it and were successful.

8. Throne Room

This room is fantastic. A 12 foot tall man with a white beard is sitting on a throne with a pile of treasure at his feet. He demands that the PCs pay tribute! In reality, it's a clay golem with an illusion and a magic mouth on it. He will attack if tribute is not paid.
 
First of all, I am doing this gimmick where their pet baby black dragon Sparky is amassing his own treasure hoard. Sparky got one look at the treasure pile and lunged at it! Dark grabbed him and stopped him.

The PCs decided to pay tribute. The text says the value of the tribute must be "more than a clay cup". The PCs don't know this, though. Each of them placed 100 gold on the pile! The giant man was incredibly pleased, grabbed his belly and let out a hearty, mirthful laugh.

I felt like they deserve some extra reward for this, but I don't know what.

9. Study and Library

There's a ghost in here who is upset that books have been stolen. I had her use her fright power as part of her flavor-moan. The heroes didn't attack her, but weren't sure what to make of this.

Dark, played by a 4th grader, was all over it. She began asking the ghost all the right questions. The ghost knows tons of lore. She even found out the name of the book the ghost most wants returned.

The gnome thief got a little lippy and asked the ghost what it was like to be dead. The Ghost tried to possess him so he could feel what it was like. This alarmed everyone and they got the heck out of there.

10. Dining Hall

This is a weird one. 5 bearded devils sit at a table, doing nothing. They are Varram's devils, and they've been ordered to kill people who come from room 11. Our PCs came from 8. So the devils don't care (There's a devil-may-care joke in here somewhere). 

The paladin has the oath of the ancients. That means he doesn't turn undead, he turns fiends! He rushed in and turned the devils. Dark twinned greater invisibility, meaning she cast it on herself and a rogue. It's a concentration spell, which means that if she is hit, she has to make a saving throw or lose the spell. But because she's invisible, there's little chance of her getting hit! This means that the rogue was able to be invisible and attack for a full minute.

The devils were slaughtered.

12. Divination Pool

This is where the magic pool is. It has no water in it. I tried to give hints that the water mechanism was back in room 5, but they didn't pick up on it.

They were more interested in the dead body and the arrows. The yuan-ti had fought the cultists in here. The dead cultist was actually stabbed in the back (by Varram!) with a special magic item - the dragontooth dagger. I accidentally declared: "It's a dagger made from a dagger's tooth" which amused the group greatly.

13. Crypt of Diderius

This is where Diderius' body is. Because the PCs answered the question at the beginning of the dungeon correctly, Diderius spoke to them. He told them that yuan-ti had taken Varram, and even opens a secret door to room 14, giving the PCs a surprise round...

14. Entryway

The adventurers raced through and jumped a bunch of lizardfolk guards. The guards only have 22 hit points each so they were done for.

We ran out of time here, which is too bad. The next encounter is he one I like the most. It's a narrow stone bridge over a chasm covered in slippery moss. I'd cleverly declared earlier that the baby black dragon had injured his wing when the boulder hit him, so they couldn't use his flight to cross.

If the heroes fall off of this bridge, it's about 120 feet! That's 12d6!

We're playing again this Sunday, so we'll find out what happens soon enough.

Yesterday we returned to the game store to play some more of the new D&D Encounters adventure Princes of the Apocalypse. Our store is having a problem in that there are too many players and not enough DMs. We have four tables and each one was either at the max of 7 or over the max. I ended up with 8 players. I have repeatedly offered to run a Thursday game for some of these excess players, but for whatever reason it is not happening.

In my opinion, the best number of players in D&D is three. Two players and a DM can also be fantastic, as it is a very intimate and comfortable setting. Once you hit five players and up, there is a lot of cross-talk and waiting for your turn, and it really slows things down.

Rules Stuff

I read up on a few things prior to the session. I re-read the Adventurer's League rules on being evil, as I have a rogue who last week literally wanted to rob a little kid. Zhentarim can be lawful evil only, so I read to him what the Zhentarim believe and gave him general guidelines on the lawful evil philosophy.

I also read up on polearm mastery. There is this variant human rule where humans can get a feat at first level. The paladin used this and took the polearm mastery feat, which allows him to take a second attack with the butt-end of his halberd each round. He can also make an opportunity attack when an enemy enters his reach if he chooses!

The whole thing felt a little overpowered at first level, but the butt-end only does a d4 and frankly 1st level was still very deadly for the PCs anyway.

Thoughts So Far

I haven't written a review of Princes of the Apocalypse because I feel like I should wait for the book to come out. I am definitely underwhelmed with this adventure so far, though.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen started out with a dragon and an army attacking a village. This one starts out with the adventurers in a (dull) town aimlessly stumbling on adventuring hooks. It feels very generic and uninspired.

The Players

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck".   
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: The new kid. Taking to the game very well.

Necromancer's Cave

We left off last time with our heroes exploring the cave complex that is home to a necromancer who calls himself the Lord of Lance Rock. They'd just survived a trap where zombies dumped rocks on them from a ledge.

They went through a tunnel and came upon a room with three zombies dressed in weird costumes: A bear suit, a lady and a jester. They sort of capered a bit. An odd encounter:

The players thought there was some kind of gimmick to the area (there should have been, IMO, but I couldn't think of anything good) so the bard started playing his flute and the tiefling sorcerer began to dance. The zombies attacked.

The adventurers killed them and explored a side passage that contained two iron chests. The Lord of Lance Rock watched them through a peephole, pulled a lever and activated a falling rocks trap. Most of the heroes made their saves. The chests were empty. Curse you, Lance Rock!

The heroes then made their way to a vast area where the Lord of Lance Rock does his necromancy. It's a big room with a lot of monsters - zombies, crawling claws and skeletons.

A battle broke out. A few PCs dropped and nearly died.

Once they were victorious, the heroes made their way to the necromancer's personal lair, which contained a pedestal made of severed arms (awesome), a hovering driftglobe and a floating symbol of elemental evil... which is an illusion (?). According to the .pdf:

"The significance of this sigil is explained in the full adventure of Princes of the Apocalypse".

The necromancer had 3 skeletons with him. Even though I had 8 players, I actually didn't add any monsters in this dungeon and it was still deadly. The necromancer fired off a pile of darts from his wand of magic missiles. He outright killed the Zhentarim rogue and dropped another PC.

The heroes rallied. The dwarf cleric called out to his god. He said: "Guide my bolt into this foul necromancer's lap!". He fired his crossbow. He rolled a natural 20.

I said, "Right in the lap!".

The new player rolled a critical on a skeleton, destroying it, which cleared the way to the necromancer, who was slain.

The heroes returned to Red Larch and rested for a few days. The Zhentarim raised the slain rogue.

I should mention that they faced off against one of my home-made earth-based random encounters on the way back: A groundhog emerged from the earth and stared at them intensely.

I know, my game is stupid. But it makes me laugh.

The players leveled up to level 2. One nice thing about this edition is that it literally takes 2 minutes to level up. Then we began part two of the adventure.

Tomb of Moving Stones

The set-up for this is really cool. A sinkhole opens up in Red Larch. A bunch of kids fall into it. The sinkhole reveals a dungeon beneath the town that some of the Town Elders have been secretly visiting.

The Town Elders secretly call themselves The Believers. There's these floating stones down there in the secret dungeon beneath Red Larch that they think predict the future. Recently, a weird priest showed up down there, who The Believers are scared of. His name is Larrakh, and he's secretly a member of the earth cult. So we're finally getting into the actual Elemental Evil stuff slightly.

So I run the sinkhole thing and I read the flavor text. A few of the Town Elders suspiciously try to keep anyone from going into the sinkhole. The new guy makes an impassioned plea which gets the Red Larchers behind him. Lucky and a few others go down, get the kids and bring them up to safety.

The Town Elders nervously discuss the situation. Lucky creeps around and eavesdrops on them, and eventually The Believers are confronted and the truth is revealed. The heroes decide to explore the dungeon.

They go down there, go through a door and come to a very long hallway with a ceiling that is very hard to describe. Here is the flavor text:

The deal here is that there are cages in the ceiling with plaster bottoms. If the PCs traverse the hallway and don't call out the password, a half-orc in a room on the far side of the hallway pulls a lever and drops some cages on the PCs. The bottom of the cages are plaster, so the PCs will explode through the plaster and wind up stuck in the cages.

It's a very cool trap, but it's tricky to describe. Art of it would have helped a lot. I knew this going in so I was ready to use the store's ceiling as an example (it has tiles).

Lucky decided to sneak down the hallway alone. Two cages dropped, but she dodged both! The half-orc ran, and she flung a dagger in his back.

The rest of the party ran to catch up, but the cages blocked their way. The goliath was able to lift each cage so the PCs could get through the hallway.

Lucky didn't pursue the half-orc. The room with the levers also had a poor kid tied to a stone. He was hungry and thirsty.

We were out of time! I like this scenario quite a bit. Even with eight players we were able to keep things moving.

In our store, three of the four D&D Encounters groups are still playing through the Tyranny of Dragons adventures. Mine is the only table playing Elemental Evil. I am noticing that seems to be the case in other stores too - most people haven't jumped into the new storyline.

I bought the actual Princes of the Apocalypse adventure tonight. I'll try to have a review of it up by tomorrow. It is loaded with art (which is good) and seems to be packed with dungeons/adventure scenarios (also good, imo).

Tonight, my plan was to get my group through the rest of part two of this adventure and then go on to do the first section of part three. The organization is so odd in this pdf. The description of the lands surrounding the tower in part three comes after the tower description. But you have to go through the lands to get to the tower.

I made a lot of bad "dad" jokes tonight. I consider myself a very low quality combination of Michael Scott (from The Office), Peter Griffin (from Family Guy) standing on a solid foundation of Simpsonian humor.

The Players

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck".   
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: The new kid. Taking to the game very well.

Moving Stones

The adventurers had found a dungeon under the town of Red Larch. It turns out an earth cultist was up to no good down there. Our heroes had freed a kid, who explained to them the vast conspiracy of madness amongst the Town Elders. Lucky put on her sunglasses (her player had sunglasses on in real life) and began opening doors with no regards for the consequences.

In the next room, the heroes battled 6 bandits. In the room was a petrified dwarf and a magic dagger with a lot of cool flavor - it has a name, it can glow, all sorts of stuff. It is nice that they added in more magic items in this adventure compared to the previous one.

They found a room where a rock was hovering in what turned out to be a magic gravity field. Lucky put "Bad Luck", her black cat in it. Bad Luck at first hated it, but then after some dice rolls found it to be warm and comfortable and the cat fell asleep while hovering 2 feet off the ground.

In another room, corpses were being chomped on by giant rats. The heroes made quick work of the rats and noted odd symbols carved into the heads of the dead bodies.

Larrakh


The heroes eventually found themselves in the final room. Larrakh the earth priest lurked past a hovering, slowly rotating stonehenge! What a cool idea! The priest has an AC of 17 and 45 hit points. The PCs could not hit this dude early on, and he cast a couple of devastating shatter spells that dropped the cleric and the paladin. Then, the players' dice got red hot and the evil priest was slain.

The next part of this scenario is tricky. The PCs need to deal with the whole Town Elders/conspiracy thing. My group is made up largely of kids, and this kind of stuff doesn't generally go too well. So I steered them through it quickly, asking pointed questions and offering a suggested course of action. They took it. Constable Harburk now runs Red Larch.

The heroes rested for a few days. I described the townsfolk looking up to the new player's rogue, as he stepped forward against the Elders last session. He gets free drinks and kids follow him around. I also described kids playing in the street, pretending to be the players' characters from the last campaign. I wanted to demonstrate that their old characters are now very famous and people talk about them and dress like them.

The players leveled to level 3 and we jumped into part 3.

Searching for Feathergale Spire

There's a caravan that is missing. Our heroes go to check it out. It's going to turn out that the Air Cult is responsible.

If you remember, I foreshadowed the earth cult by having a groundhog burst out of the ground and stare ominously at the heroes. Tonight, an owl perched on a branch dramatically turned it's head and stared into the soul of a random PC. Lucky climbed the tree and petted the owl.

Moments later, I read some flavor text! Three air cultists riding giant vultures swooped down from the sky and attacked. The Feathergale Knight is extremely cool. He has this gliding cape... it's a very cool and fun item. He had a decent amount of hit points, but magic missiles did the poor fellow in. The whole fight was over in less than a round.

Unfortunately we didn't even get to the Sighing Valley tonight, as we ran out of time. Next time, we'll do that as well as the tower.

Now that I have the book, I can start putting this whole thing together and we can really get Elemental Evil into gear!

I kind of assumed that once Elemental Evil hit, attendance to our Wednesday D&D Encounters games at the store would drop off as people moved on to other things. That is usually what happens with new editions or campaigns/launches here.

That did not happen. We had more people than ever tonight. The owner said D&D is now better attended than Magic. To put that in perspective, our store revolves around Magic: The Gathering completely. Tonight we had 4 tables, all of which were over the limit. I think we had 8 players per table.

What's interesting is that it is not Elemental Evil that is necessarily bringing them in. All of the other tables are still playing through Tyranny of Dragons. I guess people are just plain into D&D.

It always boggles my mind that nobody wants to be a DM, but that is a problem we are having. To me, playing is pretty boring in compared to running the game, but I am clearly in the minority.

Last time, the heroes found clues that Elemental Evil was occurring in the Sighing Valley. There, a cult of elemental air was up to no good, disguised as griffon-riding animal hunters known as Feathergale Knights.

The Players

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck".   
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester. He uses wild magic.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: The new kid. Taking to the game very well.

Feathergale Spire is tricky. The adventure sort of suggests that the heroes come to the Spire and are befriended by the knights, who take the PCs on a Manticore-hunting expedition and try to convert them to... elemental evil.

Feathergale Knight

But my group is so big and full of young, excitable players, that I felt like this would be utter chaos and the older players would get annoyed. So I ran it intending to have them just hack their way through the spire.

The spire itself looked boring. I figured I'd empty some rooms to move it along if necessary. But in the end, the wild magic table saved the whole session. The party sorcerer has the ability to give himself advantage, but he has to roll on the wild magic table, so he did so all night and it was awesome.

We started off at the Sighing Valley. The heroes spotted a cave high up on a cliff, and two PCs made the incredibly dangerous climb up. It was a griffon nest. No griffons were in there... but their eggs were. The heroes stole the eggs.

They climbed down and crossed the valley a bit. They met some aarakocra (bird people) who warned the heroes about the feathergale knights. They were mortified when Lucky showed them a stolen egg and asked them what kind of creature was in the egg. The aarakocra warned them to put the egg back or the mother would hunt them down!

The heroes made their way right through the valley, avoiding the gnoll encounters by mere chance. They found some rocks with a giant vulture picking at a corpse, and they left it alone.

They came to the spire and went right up to the stables at the base, which housed giant vultures and hippogriffs. One lone, nervous knight was tending to the stables. The PCs didn't trust her and began poking her and threatening her. A fight broke out. A few vulture-riders swooped down from the top of the tower, and were killed.We had our first wild surge. The party bard could fly for one minute. He loved that so much.
 
The adventurers made their way inside. The new guy dodged a really cool wooden eagle/battering ram trap expertly. The heroes proceeded to hack their way through the tower. A wild surge caused the caster to become invisible.

It is a pretty dry series of encounters when run as a hackfest. This is where the wild surges kicked in and kept things fun. The heroes looted an armory and came upon a kitchen.

The kitchen is odd. 4 cultists are around a cauldron, sniffing steam and trying to become steam. Somewhere in here, Lucky decided that her black cat rides her driftglobe (a hovering ball which follows her and glows on command).

The heroes looted some bread and "ghost peppers" (I don't know what they are but the players really wanted them).

There's a solarium with a couple cultists, led by an awesome spellcaster called a Hurricane. He can catch missiles fired at him! I ran him like a kung fu guy, who brazenly dared them to fire at him.

Flumph

A wild surge summoned 3 flumphs who were afraid of the caster. The lawful good gas bags observed the heroes and asked them why they had been summoned. They let out lavender gas of fear. The players requested that these same three flumphs be summoned every time that result on the wild surge table is rolled, which I think is a hilarious idea.

The heroes headed up some stairs and came upon a trophy room with a pair of knights inside. A wild surge summoned... a unicorn! Yes! The unicorn reared up. At first, Lucky wanted to hit it (I think she was just trying to make me laugh). Once the battle was over, Lucky tried to touch the unicorn. But she is chaotic neutral! The unicorn danced away from her in fear. She fed it a "ghost pepper". I just googled it, and these peppers are known as the "world's hottest pepper". This is good, as we ended right here so I can pick up next time with the unicorn freaking out.

The cleric is lawful good. I had the unicorn touch him with its' horn. It healed him completely and he regained all his spells, as if he had taken a long rest. It was pretty awesome.

I was disappointed that we didn't get through the whole scenario, but we got close. We are playing a special session on Saturday at the store so we should finish it and start the next one then.

Varram

We got in another special "bonus session" of The Rise of Tiamat yesterday at the store as part of my intense quest to get the adventure finished by March. We went three hours instead of two, in what turned out to be a bit of a slog through the Tomb of Diderius.

The heroes are looking for a dwarf named Varram the White. He is one of the five wyrmspeakers of the cult. Apparently he got himself into some trouble with yuan-ti while looking for his stolen white dragon mask.

I've been reading up more on rules and what my PCs can do so I am prepared for questions (I still had a major flub or two, though). The paladin took oath of the ancients. I asked him who his god was, and it turns out he never picked one. Today he told me it was Mielikki, the Forest Queen. I am going to look this god up and add in a little stuff here and there in upcoming sessions so his character feels more fleshed out. It seems obvious that the Emerald Enclave would want him to defect from the Order of the Gauntlet.

For the sake of clarity I am going to list the party here along with their faction:

• (Harper) Elf Rogue: In real life, played by Dark's dad.
• (Zhentarim) Gnome Rogue: Middle Schooler. We joke that his character lives in a garbage can.
• (Zhentarim) Elf Rogue: Middle Schooler. Often does "combo moves" with the gnome, throwing him at stuff to get Inspiration.
• (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Paladin: Middle Schooler. Oath of the Ancients.
• (Order of the Gauntlet) Half-Elf Fighter: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well.
• (Harper) Elf Sorceress: The player is in 4th grade and she loves her little black dragon, "Sparky".

Almost an entire party of elves! I've never run a group where all the members have darkvision. They never light torches.

15. Bridge

We had left off on a mossy bridge that spanned over a cavern (a 120 foot drop). When crossing it, you need to make DEX checks or you might fall in. Worse, there's lizardfolk and yuan ti waiting to ambush the adventurers.

What followed was a drawn-out conflict with the heroes very carefully advancing on the bad guys across the bridge. To speed things up, I had a few lizardfolk try to cross to engage the heroes in melee. They fell in.

19. Hatchery

This room is a pit full of newly hatched snakes (one giant swarm/monster). Some yuan-ti watch over them. Our stealthy heroes did some sneaking and then got the jump on these monsters.

When the gnome rogue was hit with a fear spell, he dropped his dagger of venom into the pit! Snakes swarmed all over it. Ever-helpful, Dark the dragon sorceress turned invisible, went down and retrieved it. The gnome was cured of his fear by the paladin (his real-life brother) with a heroism spell.

These encounters would have been pretty dull if not for these fun little moments. I tried to bring them to life but it didn't quite click like I wanted it to. Too many combat encounters! Also, I just never liked yuan-ti, so it's hard for me to get into it.

17. Yuan-Ti Quarters

This room has a pressure plate in it. If stepped on, a dart trap goes off hitting everyone. There's a few bad guys in here, who were getting thrashed.

It's starting to become an issue where the bad guy's plus to hit is too low. +3 to hit isn't too useful vs. the paladin, who has an AC of 18 or 19. And further, the party has three rogues who each have multiple abilities to minimize damage. While I don't want to penalize them for good tactics, I do feel the need to start running my monsters in a more clever manner.

On top of that... my dice were really cold tonight. In the end, a lizardman purposely stepped on the plate and triggered the dart trap and only one PC got his by the darts, and he was able to nullify the damage.

Each room in this place has at least some kind of gimmick, but after getting through the tomb, the yuan-ti stuff feels tacked-on and really just kind of odd.

A player noted that this dungeon is very Indiana Jones-y, almost explicitly. There's a rolling boulder trap, entrance similar to the exterior of the grail locale in Last Crusade, an "only the penitent shall pass" type trap, and a room full of snakes. He's right! It is pretty blatant.

I don't mind.. I love Indiana Jones. They made this tomb different enough that it works as a D&D dungeon.

22. Temple

The heroes came upon the final area. The leader of the yuan-ti has the dwarf (Varram the White) tied up on an altar. The adventure says that the yuan-ti will try to trade the PCs Varram in exchange for goods and services.

But the heroes never got the chance. They peered in and saw the set-up. Their plan: Have Dark twin-cast Greater Invisibility and cast it twice, thus making 4 of the 6 members of the party invisible.

I made a mistake here, and realized it while driving home. Greater Invisibility is a concentration spell. You can only have one of those going at the same time. I don't think a single caster can have two Greater Invisibilities running concurrently.

I wasn't too concerned because we were just about out of time and I wanted to get the room done. I did not want another long, boring fight with yuan-ti. Plus, I wanted to see this play out. I'll look it up and talk to them about concentration next time we play.

The invisible rogues moved into position and just stabbed away, killing the yuan-ti before she even knew what was happening. Then the paladin strode in from the entrance.

From the other yuan-ti's perspective, they just saw their leader die a bloody death out of nowhere, and then a paladin confidently marched into the room.

They wanted no part of this paladin and his incredible powers, so they surrendered. The heroes removed Varram from the altar.

The Fate of Varram the White

The PCs have Varram. It turns out that he lost the white dragon mask (one of the lamer things about Tyranny of Dragons is that the PCs spend a lot of time chasing after dragon masks that they can't actually obtain).

The group healed Varram, questioned him, and then argued about what to do with him. Dark's real life dad wanted to kill Varram. Dark vehemently objected, and made a very heartfelt plea to the group to keep him alive. She actually asked, "Are we a bunch of murderers?"

The gnome agreed with her. But her dad and the other rogue just went ahead and slit Varram's throat.

If I was a player in this group and that 4th grader made that speech, there is no way on God's green earth that Varram is dying and my character would fight any PC that tried to kill him.

It was a bit of a bummer. She was legit upset when this happened. She actually made a comment about quitting the group.

She was back to normal a few minutes later. Her dad bought her a My Little Pony doll and it seemed like the whole thing had been forgotten.

Player Art

Dark throwing a gnome.

Dark and the gnome do drawings in a notebook when it's not their turn. Sometimes they give me drawings to keep at the end of a session. Above is an image that the player Dark drew. It depicts Dark throwing the gnome rogue at a bad guy, a situation that happened in a previous session (I think it was in the fight with the tile chimera from last session. The chimera was on a ledge ten feet up so Dark chucked him up there). I asked the player of the gnome to make me one, hopefully I can post it here in a week or two.

The heroes found two protection scrolls as treasure. In 2nd edition AD&D, as a kid, I never understood protection scrolls. Any PC can cast them, apparently. I'd better read up on them.
 
They also found the Dragontooth Dagger, or as we call it, the Daggertooth Dagger - The dagger made from the tooth of a dagger.

This Wednesday, the heroes are going to go to the Sea of Moving Ice. But prior to that, they're going to deal with the first of the three assassin encounters in the book. I cooked up a pretty epic encounter, if I do say so myself.

I was able to squeeze in an extra session of Princes of the Apocalypse at the game store today. It was Tabletop Day, a special event where people came in to play tabletop games (mostly board games and card games, from what I saw).

Last time we played, a player had started using the wild surge table. I read up on it and we weren't doing it right. It works like this:

• The sorcerer gives himself advantage on any roll
• When he casts a spell that is not a cantrip, the DM can decide to make him roll on the wild surge table.
• Once that happens, he is free to give himself advantage on a roll again...

It's an endless cycle of him giving himself advantage and me making him roll on the wild surge table.

We are nearing the end of the pdf. I have been really reluctant to read through the actual book, as I just haven't found this adventure very compelling so far. It's not a bad module or anything, but it is not lighting my imagination on fire.

The Party

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck".   
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester. He uses wild magic.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this. Has a dog.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: The new kid. Taking to the game very well.

This group of eight players is just too big. I am not sure what to do about it.

Feathergale Spire


Our heroes were exploring Feathergale Spire, which is home to the Air Cult. Last time, Lucky had fed a unicorn a ghost pepper. I started off this time with having the unicorn freak out, as now I knew what a ghost pepper was.

They made their way to the top, which is a flat area with grass. This is where the bad guys throw their sacrificial victims to their doom. It is a long drop to the valley below.

The leader of the Spire Cult, Thurl, was here with some feathergale knights. The bard cast phantasmal force and made Thurl believe he was trapped in a web spell. The sorcerer fired off a spell and caused a wild surge that turned the sorcerer's skin blue (he loved this).

Thurl shook off the illusion, but he and his men were no match for the heroes. I often roll low on initiative, which means 6 or 7 PCs get to hack at the bad guys before they get to go. Frequently this means that the fight is almost over in round one.

The bard found this spell

The heroes beat the bad guys and looted the tower. They found a note from the Air Cult leader Aerisi (the winged woman on the cover of the adventure). The note had some details on how this cult is watching the earth cult - an annoying detail that could disrupt the faint trail of crumbs that should lead the PCs to Rivergard Keep - the only other location in the .pdf.

6th Level Dungeon for 3rd Level PCs

In the book version of this scenario, there's a tunnel in The Sighing Valley that leads to the Air Temple, which is for level 6 PCs (the party is level 3). I don't get why the authors would put that there. If you have ever had a party of PCs stumble into a dungeon meant for higher level PCs, you know how incredibly unpleasant things can become at the table.

Some players can roll with it. Quite a few can not! I really dislike the organization of this module. There's a million land mines in here.

Red Larching It

Minsc & Boo

The heroes returned to Red Larch for some rest and leveling up. They are now level 4. During their days of rest, a few things happened:

• Some local kids re-enacted a scene from Tyranny of Dragons, where Dark threw the gnome at the Tile Chimera. I want to emphasize that the heroes of the previous campaign are now famous, and that what the characters do matters.
• The cleric and paladin prayed at the shrine, and received the same vision: The origin of Gar Shatterkeel, the leader of the water cult. I want to introduce the main villains now, to build them up in the players' minds so that the final confrontation is foreshadowed and feels important.
• Agents of the Harpers have come to town to help the heroes: Minsc and Boo. I figured since they're in Neverwinter and Chris Perkins used them in the Acquisitions Inc. Elemental Evil session, I should use them in this adventure. I had Minsc yell in front of the whole town that he needed to have a "SECRET HARPER MEETING". I had read up on Minsc to make sure I ran him right. I also listened to his quotes to try to get the voice right.
• I gave the rogue a chance to teach his dog a trick, but he couldn't think of anything.
• Lucky's cat, "Bad Luck", sleeps on the driftglobe (a hovering, glowing ball that follows Lucky around) as it hovers. The cat also likes to hover past people and swipe at them. Lucky didn't want the cat sleeping on the driftglobe for some reason.
• The bard was asked to perform at the Swinging Sword. The better he performed, the more free nights the PCs would have to stay at the inn. He rolled really high, and some of the other members of the party assisted by dancing. Lucky aided them by doing "circus tricks".

Minsc told the heroes about goings-on in Rivergard Keep. The heroes headed out there to investigate.

Rivergard Keep

My player map

Along the way, they spotted a campfire. Water cultists were camped. Two rogues and the blue-skinned sorcerer (who rolled a critical check on his stealth) crept up and eavesdropped. The cultists talked about stealing stuff and bringing it to Rivergard Keep, and speculated on what it was like in the Air Temple and the Elemental Node.

The bard dropped a shatter spell on the camp, which utterly decimated them. The heroes rushed the camp and slaughtered the bad guys.

The bad guys didn't have much loot, other than crab shields and shark teeth swords.

They continued on and came to Rivergard Keep. I drew a map for them. The younger players love the opportunity to use stealth, and I knew this. There is one guard on each wall.

We got bogged down as the players discussed how to approach the keep. The older players wanted to go in via the water. The younger players wanted to stealth in. One rogue wanted to go in alone, take out a wall guard, and open the gate.

I liked that idea. What eventually happened was that all three rogues approached the keep under the cover of night. The wall guard spotted movement (a rogue rolled really bad on his stealth). The other two rogues quickly scaled the wall. They tried to chuck the guard off the wall to his doom, but rolled poorly. The guard drew his weapon and let out a shout of alarm which echoed across the keep.

Lucky pulled herself onto the wall and roundhouse kicked the dude off the wall.

Bad guys in the keep had heard the shout, and the rogues saw movement on the keep grounds. One rogue is an arcane trickster. He cast disguise self to appear like the dead guard.

Another guard raced over to find out what had happened. The disguised rogue pretended he had defeated the other two rogues and captured them. Then, all three heroes jumped the guard and slaughtered him.

They ran to the gate. They didn't know that opening it was a bit more tricky than expected. There were guards peering down in murder holes and bluffing involved. It all ended up with the rogues getting the gates open and the rest of the party racing through.

The keep was on alert and there was likely to be a lot of fighting ahead...

We stopped there. It was a lot of fun! I generally don't like to split the party, but in this instance I think it was entertaining to watch and it didn't take up too much time.

I have been trying to map out this campaign and figure out the best way to try to get the whole thing done by August. We have about 17 sessions worth of Wednesdays until mid-August. If I do just the essential stuff in this adventure, that's 2 more keeps, 4 temples and 4 nodes. That means I'd have to get through each of those parts in about 2 sessions. I don't think I can do that.

It looks like I will have to do a number of Sunday sessions to make sure we can finish it on time. I also do want to include some of the side adventures in the book. Some of them are pretty fun.

Lucky couldn't make it this week, so we had 7 players. I was hoping we would finish Rivergard, but we didn't come close.

Dungeons & Friends

Somehow we ended up talking about a staring contest as a D&D encounter. In my opinion, that would make for a hilarious 4th edition skill challenge.

I was thinking about how Lucky's player likes to make friends with all the monsters, and I thought it would be awesome to have an entire session where every encounter could be resolved by making friends with the creatures and NPCs. You could include the staring contest, and all sorts of goofy stuff, like making a fantasy ice cream cone or something.

Lucky's dad pointed out that if we did have a session of "Dungeons & Friends", Lucky would probably then end up trying to attack the friend monsters. She's funny like that. If you remember, when the unicorn appeared due to the wild surge a few weeks back, she first tried to do it harm before feeding it an ultra-spicy pepper.

The Party   

• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent and worships Ilmater.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester. He uses wild magic and his skin is blue.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this. Has a dog.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Worships Helm. Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: A new player. Taking to the game very well.

The adventurers had made their way to Rivergard Keep, secret above-ground outpost of the Water Cult. Last session, the rogues had infiltrated the keep and opened the front gate. The other heroes ran in through the gate and had to pass through the interior of a gatehouse, laced with murder holes.

Crushing Wave Reaver

Bad guys stabbed through the murder holes with spears. I joked that one murder hole had an "out of order" sign on it.

The adventures fought back, casting spells and firing ranged weapons. It was a pretty simple fight. I am noticing that the spellcasters are starting to change the game. In Tyranny of Dragons, the part was almost entirely made of melee. This time around, there's a bard, a sorcerer and a cleric.

The heroes emerged into the courtyard of the keep, which was on alert. They had waited until nightfall to make this assault. I showed them the player map and they chose where to go next. As fate would have it, they decided to head right to the great hall, where the leader of the bad guys was!

The heroes burst in and did battle with Jolliver, a fathomer and 2 reavers. The fathomer turned into a serpent made of water and began constricting a rogue. Jolliver transformed into a half-man/half-boar. He was indeed a wereboar!

He and the fathomer had resistance against non-magic weapons. The casters unleashed a torrent of spells that blinded and scattered the bad guys. There was even a spell that forced Jolliver to lumber in such a way that he provoked three opportunity attacks.

The sorcerer triggered a wild surge that caused him to levitate. I was a little confused as to whether he could turn the effect off - I assume not, as it is wild magic.

It was a long battle, but the heroes weren't really in too much danger. I rolled really high on many saving throws, but when it came to attack rolls I rolled extremely low. In fact, I think Jolliver only hit somebody one time (and the PC made their save against becoming a were-boar... which would have been awesome, IMO).

The sorcerer triggered another wild surge, which caused him to radiate light that blinded those who started their turns adjacent to him. He used this to the party's advantage by standing next to the bad guys, which was very amusing.

Once the reavers were slain, we ran out of time! I floated the idea of splitting the group into two, one group meeting on Mondays, as the group has gotten too big. None of them wanted to do that.

We had a lot of Rivergard Keep left to go. Next week I am hoping to finish it up and then run one of the side encounters, involving rampaging iceshield orcs, which seems like it could be fun.

The adventurers headed up some stairs, looted the bad guys room and battled a pile of reavers.

Olhydra... I can't find the 5e art for her online yet.

We had a very good session of D&D tonight at the game store, but we did not get nearly as far as I wanted to. It is becoming very clear that we will need to do quite a few bonus sessions to make sure we finish this adventure by August.

My plan was to finish Rivergard Keep and then jump into the Iceshield Orcs scenario. This adventure has a number of scenarios in a separate chapter that the DM can use to flesh things out and keep it from getting stale. I wasn't sure if I was going to use any of them, but once I read the orcs one I decided I had to use it. It has nothing to do with elemental evil whatsoever, but it seems like a lot of fun.

My group got to the store very early tonight. We actually started 10 minutes before 6 PM.

The Party     

•  Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck". 
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent and worships Ilmater.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester. He uses wild magic and his skin is blue.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this. Has a dog.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Worships Helm. Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: A new player. Taking to the game very well.

Dungeons & Friends

Chapel

If you remember last time, we had the idea for "Dungeons & Friends". Lucky likes to make friends with bad guys. So I decided that each time we play, there will be one encounter where the goal is to make friends. I ran it like a 4e skill challenge (my way).

So, our heroes had taken down the wereboar leader of Rivergard Keep. As the heroes exited his building, they saw the door to the nearby chapel open. A priestess and 2 reavers were inside. The priestess as described in the book loves to go on and on and will preach about water to the PCs for 2 hours if they let her. So she invited the heroes in, and tried to make friends in the hopes of getting them to join the cult. The priestess is named Drosnin.

Drosnin would say some stuff to each hero, and then the hero would make some kind of skill roll to befriend her. If they got stuck on an idea, I had Lucky give some helpful advice (her advice was stuff like, "Tell her she's awesome!"). If the PC did well, Drosnin would answer a question about Rivergard Keep. Basically I used her to tell the PCs where the monsters were so we could get through this thing faster.

It went like this:

• PC 1. Drosnin showed them the Crushing Wave hand symbol.
• PC 2. Drosnin said that sharks, octopi and aquatic ghouls obeyed the cultists. The PC (the wild magic sorcerer/jester with blue skin) did a dance, which greatly amused Drosnin.
• PC 3. Drosnin explained that living creatures are living water trapped in a shell, yearning to return to the sea.
• PC 4. She said the cult was patient, and would wait for an opening to exploit it.
• PC 5. Drosnin offered to show a rogue how to meditate underwater. He hugged her.
• PC 6. She praised the cult's leader - Gar Shatterkeel, who had a crab claw for an arm and was covered in barnacles.
• PC 7. Drosnin spoke of Drown, Gar's artifact trident that could control water elementals. The party cleric interrupted her and actually tried to convert her to his god. She was not happy about this.
• Lucky. Drosnin talked about Olhydra, the princess of water, a mighty wave with glowing eyes. Lucky was not impressed with Olhydra, but officially befriended Drosnin.

Drosnin declared that with Jolliver dead, she'd be punished for failure. She fled to the forest to hide from the cult, and the PCs were free to visit her.

Lucky got to put her first friend on her friend list - Drosnin

Rampaging Through the Keep

The heroes now knew where all the bad guys were located at Rivergard Keep. They commenced with murdering.

They busted into the barracks and killed 8 bandits with ease.

They headed over to a tower where 3 nasty bugbears lived. The bugbears were quite a challenge, doing 11 points of damage when they hit. My dice were on fire tonight. During the battle, the sorcerer triggered a wild magic surge, giving himself mirror images.

A few heroes were almost down when this fight ended. Luckily, the cleric and bard both have plenty of healing magic.

Water Tower

Then the adventurers made their way to a southern tower, where 4 cultists watched over the dock area, where two boats were moored. They had a device that raised and lowered a chain that could prevent boats from reaching the dock.

Lucky and a rogue snuck in and convinced the cultists that Jolliver was dead and they needed to take a boat and leave. The rogue rolled really well on the bluff. The bad guys lowered the chain, took the boat and began sailing out. Then the heroes raised the chain so it caught their boat and opened fire on them from the tower windows. The bad guys were slaughtered and the boat began to sink.

Bad guys appeared on the other boat - a caster, two bandits and a thug. The heroes headed down to deal with them.

What followed was a truly epic battle. The heroes began the fight on land. I inadvertantly changed the map so that the enemy boat was about 50 feet out in the water. The sunken boat was nearby.

The caster on the other boat, Shoalar, had a new spell called tidal wave. She devastated the heroes with it as they stood on land opposite (K10 on the map).

The wild sorcerer set the enemy ship's sail on fire with a fire bolt. The bard cracked the mast and injured the bad guys with a shatter spell.

A few PCs swam over and climbed on to the sinking ship to get closer and make ranged attacks. Shoalar hit them with a tidal wave spell, which dropped a PC and tipped the ship!

Lucky dove from the tower into the water, swimming underneath the enemy ship. She found a porthole and climbed in belowdecks. She came upon a prisoner, tied up.

The prisoner was a druid named Okobo, a member of the emerald enclave. I placed Okobo here as a hook to get the PCs to the Iceshield Orcs scenario. She had been captured by the water cult while looking for help to defeat the rampaging orcs. Lucky freed Okobo and added her to her friend list.

I took Okobo from the Neverwinter MMO. Okobo has whitish eyes and thinks she can hear air spirits talking to her.

A few PCs had on the special gliding armor that allowed them to fly/glide a few times. A couple heroes flew over the water toward the ship. This caused the water cultists to think the air cult was attacking them. The two bandits tipped the burning, cracked mast, causing it to come crashing down on a gliding paladin!

It was hard to figure out the damage. I did ten points (probably should have been 15) and had him make a check to see if he had the air knocked out of him and if he was drowning.

A rogue on the sinking ship chucked a grappling hook and ensnared a thug on the other ship. He pulled the thug overboard.

From there, the heroes closed in on the enemy ship and took the bad guys down. It was awesome, easily the best encounter in this campaign and maybe even better than anything in Tyranny of Dragons.

It all came out of Lucky's idea to trick the bad guys into taking their ship and leaving.

The only bad thing is by the time this was done, we were out of time. We didn't even get to the Iceshield orcs at all.

Adventures in Real Life

Ketchup...? Catsup...?

After the game, I stopped at the grocery store and was using the automated checkout. A woman came up to me and asked me if I had a quarter, as she was really hungry and didn't have quite enough money.

Right next to this grocery store is a hotel. There's some kind of program where down on their luck people get to live there for a short time until they get some kind of government housing.

She wanted oatmeal cookies, so I bought them with my card and took her change. I feel like I shouldn't have took her money at all. She was telling me stuff like how she used to live in Cleveland and how nobody in the store would give her a quarter. I would guess that not so many people carry actual money on them any more.

So I buy her cookies, take her change and she thanks me. Then, this shady dude walks by and says "thank you sir" and they leave together.

I found it amusing. She was good-looking and it was smart of them to send just her to ask me what, I would guess, is a very embarrassing question. The guy looked like a full-blown junkie. I think I still would have gotten him his cookies but I can appreciate their carnie approach.

I have a boring life. I get a kick out of having "real life encounters" like this every once in a while. As long as they're not dangerous, that is, because I have a passive perception of 6 and a 9 AC due to my low dexterity.

It has taken me forever, but I've finally finished this review of Princes of the Apocalypse. This adventure is part of D&D's second "storyline", Elemental Evil.

First I am going to go over what's in the book, then I'll further expound on what I feel is the good and bad of this adventure. This contains tons of spoilers! Please, if you are a player, don't ruin it for everyone.

This review took me so long partly because I just can't get excited about this adventure. It is such a chore to read through. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of fun D&D in here. But the early level stuff and the way this book is organized are killing me. Anyway, we'll get to that. 

The foreword by Mike Mearls is very informative. I'm going to include it here as an image.

Chapter 1: Rise of Elemental Evil

The backstory to this adventure is complicated, but boils down to this: Four prophets of elemental evil have formed cults and dwell in a complex underground area in the dwarven ruins of Tyar-Besil. The cults are gaining power and threatening the region.

Each cult is detailed. The leaders of the cult are really cool villains.

(Earth) Marlos Urnrayle: A vain man who tried to preserve his good looks with a magic ring, but it instead turned him into a medusa. He went insane and began to have visions, which caused him to form the earth cult.

(Water) Gar Shatterkeel: A man who fell overboard at sea and had his arm bit off by a shark. A current saved him from the shark attack, and Gar was certain the current was actually a water elemental. He began to worship water, and now has a crab claw in place of his arm.

(Fire) Vanifer: A tiefling woman who grew up poor. She became a dancer and was taken as a concubine by a wealthy pasha. She resented being a "trophy" and burned the pasha's place to the ground.

(Air) Aerisi Kalinoth: A spoiled elf from the Feywild who could not get along with her peers. She ended up having visions which led her to forming the cult of air and growing "wings" which allowed her to escape her home.

After this, there's a massive pile of character hooks which, IMO, should have been in the player's companion.

Chapter 2: The Dessarin Valley

This chapter describes the area the adventure takes place in. There's a sidebar that tells you that the year is 1491 DR. You'll find that the sidebars in this adventure contain much of the most essential information in the entire book.

The bulk of this chapter details the starting town, Red Larch. It is a very dull place best known for crumblecake - a bland combination of bread and "wildfowl scraps". And yes, this information on crumblecake is given to us in a sidebar.

There's a ton of NPCs who have descriptions like "...a kindly old dodderer, but she is sharper than she appears". There are so many NPCs with adventure hooks and secrets that it is completely disorienting and difficult to figure out how to handle.

A Sidebar About Sandboxes

This adventure is very "sandbox-y". The authors want to plop your PCs down and let them stumble on whatever they stumble on.

My problem with that is that there is so much material for the DM to have a handle on, that allowing the PCs to free roam in that manner means I'll need to have read and prepared a vast selection of material that is scattered in different chapters throughout the book.

It is one thing if I'm running a sandbox adventure that is 22 pages long and has a hex map with 15 encounters all meant for characters of a certain level. It's another thing entirely when it's a 250 page book and some of the stuff the PCs might stumble on is meant for much higher level characters. It means a couple of things:

1. I need to prepare a ton of stuff, know where it is ahead of time, and have it all firmly lodged in my brain at game time.
2. I have to have players who can handle a situation where their 3rd level PCs stumble into a 6th level dungeon. As many of you are aware, there are quite a few players who will be absolutely enraged if this were to happen, and your session/campaign will be ruined.

Back to Red Larch. My favorite Red Larcher is Grund, a half orc who "...ekes out a living by making pickles in vats at the end of the field".

Red Larch needs a half-page summary that details all of the essential information of the town (like they did in 4e products). You're not going to know that the town is run by Constable Harburk and a bunch of Town Elders without doing a lot of digging, and that info is essential to the adventure. They do list the main town NPCs on page 20, but it's not laid out plainly enough for my liking.

The rest of the chapter details all of the other locations in the Valley. There's a ton of them. My favorite is the stone bridge, a massive, high bridge that is only 6 paces wide. It crosses the Dessarin River and has a very cool piece of art. I can imagine all sorts of encounters on this thing.

Chapter 3: Secret of the Sumber Hills

A sidebar tells us that the adventure assumes the PCs begin at level 3. Lower level adventures are in chapter 6. OK, then. Thank you, sidebar.

We get the opening flavor, which describes Red Larch and the fact that an important delegation from Mirabar has gone missing (Get ready to dig to find out where all the delegates have been taken to. I saw it earlier and I can't find it now). Then we are given a collection of flavor text for various things the PCs might investigate.

I just saw something. Bear with me, here. As of this writing, I just finished running Rivergard Keep, the second of the four haunted keeps in this adventure. The heroes just battled a person named Shoalar Quanderil.

In the Rivergard section on page 56, it says to refer to "chapter 7" for details on Shoalar. Finding Shoalar's stats isn't easy because the NPCs in that chapter are not listed in alphabetical order. It's page 208.

Flipping there gives you Shoalar's stats and a bit of a description. I changed Shoalar to a female on a whim when I ran this. There's also a mention on page 56 that Shoalar is in the "Womford Rats section earlier in this chapter" but gives no page number. The Womford Rats thing is not listed in the table of contents.

If you can find the Womford Rats scenario (page 44), you will see that this mini-encounter contains an entire paragraph on role-playing Shoalar and cool treasure on his person that is not detailed anywhere else! 

I have to refer to three separate sections to get details on one NPC. Why are they making this so complicated?!

Then we get into the meat of the chapter, which is four outposts. Each one is manned by a different cult in disguise. Each "haunted keep" protects an entrance into the Temple of Elemental Evil beneath.

Early on, you will run into a quandary. While investigating the air cult at Feathergale Spire, our heroes might explore the surrounding valley. The valley, by the way, is described after the spire, just to throw you off a little bit, I guess. The heroes could very well find a tunnel in the valley that leads to the temple.

The entrance is guarded by three hurricanes (spellcasting air cultists who can catch arrows fired at them), which is a very tough fight for level 3 PCs, but still... there it is. Your PCs will either have a TPK or kill these tough dudes and wander into a level 6 dungeon.

Rivergard Keep is the water cult outpost. This place looked dull on paper but came alive in play - my players snuck in at night, had all sorts of shenanigans and had an epic battle on the boats.

There is an entrance to the temple in a confusing location on the map  - a secret landing with an underground stream. I just omitted this, as I don't want my players to march into a level 7 dungeon.

There's two more outposts/"haunted keeps":

The Sacred Stone Monastery: Home to earth cultists posing as monks. Things I am noticing as I read through:

• The cultists wear "...hooded robes and gargoyle masks made of gilded tin", which is awesome.
• There is quite a bit of material that anticipates PCs entering the place in disguise or through subterfuge. Many of the rooms are dull areas with a few cultists in them.
• Beyond an arcane locked door is.. a lich! He doesn't want to waste time with the PCs. If they try to provoke him, he says things like "I am not your enemy. Now go." If the PCs insist, the adventure is kind enough to just have the lich cast time stop, drop a cloudkill spell, and then leave (his phylactery is in the next room.. I assume he takes it with him?). This seems like a fascinating encounter, So many groups will do so many different things here.
• There's a mine underneath the monastery that contains slaves and an ogre: "...a flabby simpleton called Drool". There's few things players love more than tricking dim-witted NPCs, so this should be fun.

The mine has a bunch of cool encounters. I'll probably cut out some locations when I run this.

Scarlet Moon Hall: The fire cult is posing as a druid circle.  They have this giant wicker man that's on fire (it actually has a fire elemental bound in it - awesome) and they're having a celebration. It's a smaller location that includes all sorts of stuff:

• Another captured brown bear (whats with this adventure and imprisoned bears?)
• A druid and two sprites who are hanging out, unaware that this is all a front for the fire cult. I can do a lot of cool stuff with this.
• A spy from another cult!
• A potential fight on burning scaffolding.

This area looks very promising!

Chapter 4: Air, Earth, Fire and Water

The throne room of Marlos Unrayle

This chapter kicks off with a few encounters to sprinkle throughout the campaign. There is absolutely no way anybody can run this campaign and keep all this straight. Many of these encounters deal with a really cool item like the devastation orb, which is kind of like an elemental bomb.

Then we get into the four temple dungeons, which are the heart of the adventure. From what I understand, once the PCs kill one of the prophets, the other 3 flee to the fane and the nodes.

Temple of Howling Hatred:

Tons of cool stuff in here. This is a great dungeon. Stuff that stuck out to me:

• The classic "prisoners endlessly pushing the rotating wheel" thing - massive stone pillars with crossbeams that form spokes pushed around and around by humans being whipped.
• A minstrel and his band playing horrible music on bone flutes. My party bard and jester will love this.
• Kenku using their mimic ability that I always forget about.
• A pyramid guarded by a skyweaver (spellcasting cultist) riding a wyvern.
• A moat patrolled underwater by a 12 foot tall statue of a dwarf.

Temple of the Crushing Wave:

Portions of this dungeon are on a river or underground lake. Tons of cool stuff:

• A knight riding a shark.
• The "Troll Hole".
• A dwarven brewery with vats that water weirds come out of (beer weirds?).
• A dragon turtle that attacks boats.

This dungeon feels a little too big and in some ways not as cool as the air one, but it's still really good.

Temple of Black Earth:

This one is pretty good. Some cool ideas:

• A battle with gargoyles on a walkway over a chasm.
• A mud sorcerer (!) who worships both Ogremoch and Olhydra.
• A priestess with a black pudding under her command.

Temple of Eternal Flame

This one looks mostly like rooms full of monsters, with a few interesting traps and a forge.

Chapter 5: Temple of the Elder Elemental Eye

We start off with some elemental disaster encounters, meant to be spread out during our heroes' journeys to and from the temple. Then we get another dungeon, which connects the temples to the nodes..

The Fane of the Eye

Long ago, drow built this place in tribute to the Elder Elemental Eye. It's a common ground for members of each cult. Things that grabbed me:

• The PCs might get stuck in a whirlwind while flying swords attack them.
• PCs playing hill giants in a game of tic-tac-toe.
• A fire-breathing minotaur.

Once one prophet was slain in the above dungeons, the others fled down here. One prophet is in the fane. The other two are bunkered in their respective nodes.

From the fane, there are entrances to four elemental nodes. These nodes are locales infused with elemental power that give the cults their powers and are causing natural disasters in the region.

The Howling Caves

This is the air node. Some cool stuff:

• There's a crazy encounter on a frozen lake that I don't want to spoil.
• A chasm that may have to be crossed that has an unpredictable, raging storm going on in it.

The final room has 3 possible scenarios

1. If Aerisi was previously slain, there's just two elementals in here.
2. If Aerisi escaped the final battle in the temple of howling hatred, then she is here and she battles the heroes while trying to summon Yan-C-Bin, the elemental prince of air.
3. If Aerisi escaped and she is the last surviving prophet, then she actually summons Yan-C-Bin! The PCs will have quite a fight on their hands.

This is the story in each of the nodes. Basically, the last surviving prophet ends up summoning a prince of elemental evil that the heroes will have to defeat. So if one prophet is killed up in the temple, and one is killed in the fane, that leaves two in the nodes. The last surviving prophet summons a prince of elemental evil.

The Plunging Torrents

The water node has some neat encounters:

• This entire place is partially submerged, so our heroes will need to use a boat or swim.
• There's hovering globes of water and an aboleth reaching into the minds of the PCs. 
• A battle with a hydra among wrecked ships.

The final battle scenario here is just like the Aerisi one. If Gar is the last surviving prophet, he will summon Olhydra.

The Black Geode

The earth node. It is a cavern lit by luminous violet crystals. Things that stick out to me:

• There's a bunch of great random encounters that could really enhance a battle. Stuff like a ceiling collapse or a fissure opening up in the floor under a party member.
• Glowing crystals that can enchant those looking into their light.
• As the PCs cross a bridge over a chasm, boulders animate and roll through them! What a great idea.

If Marlos is the last surviving prophet, he summons Ogremoch.

The Weeping Colossus

This is the fire node, so there's obviously lava all over the place in here. What is more D&D than fighting near pools of lava?

• Lava rain!
• A roper made of molten magma.
• A room with walls lined with skulls

The final battle here is pretty epic even if Vanifer is dead. There's a giant colossus that weeps lava and some other stuff I don't want to spoil.

This chapter is full of fantastic stuff!

Chapter 6: Alarums and Excursions

Here we have mini-adventures for characters of various levels.

First off, there's three level one adventures, involving bandits, a haunted crypt and a necromancer, respectively. I ran them all. They were fine, but in my opinion a lousy way to start off an elemental evil campaign.

Tomb of Moving Stones: This adventure exposes the weird goings-on in Red Larch and the dungeon right beneath people's feet. The dungeon has a very cool hallway trap and a great final room.

New Management: The heroes take over an inn and the Zhentarim cause shenanigans. This adventure really doesn't look good to me.

Iceshield Orcs: A really cool scenario where the heroes defend a compound against rampaging orcs. It could have used more detail, but I like it enough that I'm running it next week.

The Long Road: Anyone who played Tyranny of Dragons will run screaming from this scenario that involves the heroes riding in a caravan, protecting it from bandits.

Curse of the Fire Witch: A weird scenario involving barbarians attacking people that may lead to the heroes doing nothing but watching.

Vale of Dancing Waters: A trip into some dwarven ruins with a few monsters in it.

Dark Dealings in Yartar: An awesome scenario where bad guys are auctioning off a devastation orb to the highest bidder.

Rundreth Manor: The heroes go and check on a shadow dragon to see if it has joined the cult. This one looks really cool.

Halls of the Hunting Axe: This one involves a quest for a magic item known as Orcsplitter and even has an encounter on that giant stone bridge! Looks fantastic.

Chapter 7: Monsters and Magic Items

There's a ton of creative cultist types and the main villains are extremely cool. There's also stats for the princes of elemental evil: Imix, Ogremoch, Olhydra and Yan-C-Bin!

The magic items are really great. There's the 4 artifacts, a few dwarven relics, and then really cool elemental gear like a weird tank ( A tank of liquid that you strap to your back that contains a water weird that will pop out and fight for you!) and claws of the umber hulk (claw gauntlet weapons that let you burrow 20 feet per round).

I don't want to give too many details, but the magic items are top notch.

Appendix A: Genasi

Not much to say here. This is the genasi race - humanoids infused with fire, water, air or earth energy.

Appendix B: Spells

The spells are great. There's a ton of them and they're used a lot in the book. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of a few of them already, especially tidal wave.

Other Stuff

Razerblast

There's some notes on setting this campaign on other worlds: Greyhawk, Eberron, Dragonlance and Dark Sun.

The last few pages of the book are a sketchbook, featuring a lot of cool designs. I especially like the razerblast fire cultists.

It is amazing how much content they fit into this one book. It feels like more stuff than what they put in the two books of Tyranny of Dragons combined. Somehow Tyranny felt like it needed more pages, and this doesn't.

Now we're going to go into my overall thoughts.

The Bad Things About Princes of the Apocalypse

The Organization of this Adventure is Terrible

This is by far my biggest bone of contention with this product. The way it is organized is completely ridiculous. Material is literally spread out all over the book. You, the DM, must sit down and spend so much time putting all the pieces together.

Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel? Paizo adventure paths are linear. It's all right there, in logical order. It works. If a DM wants to pull it apart, he or she can still do that. I do it all the time.

As a sandbox, this is a hot mess. Good luck flying by the seat of your pants while trying to figure out what page the hooks are on (I swear to you they are in at least two different sections of the book), what page the scenario is, bookmarking the Dessarin Valley map, managing random encounters and handling the fact that your heroes are likely to be facing off against monsters too powerful for them, especially in the early going.

I can't fathom a new DM running this adventure successfully. If this was the first campaign a new DM tried to run, he or she is likely to run screaming from the table. I mean... the level one adventure that will begin the entire adventure for most groups is in chapter 6. Chapter 6! Why?!

The Adventure is Lame Until You Get To The Temples

From what I have seen, most people's campaigns don't make it more than a handful of sessions. Maybe that is changing with 5e. But what that means to me is that the beginning of your adventure needs to be really exciting to grab people and get them off and running. Hopefully you can propel them with thrills that will catapult them through months of gaming. At worst, at least the few sessions they do play will be fondly remembered.

Scales of War started off with an awesome encounter. The town is under attack. An ogre pulling a cart full of bomb-throwing goblins turns the corner and heads right for our heroes!

Skull and Shackles kicks off with our heroes waking up on a pirate ship stripped of their belongings. They are assigned tasks and given rum rations. They need to get good at their duties and begin to plan a mutiny against the pirate scum that forced them into labor!

Princes of the Apocalypse starts with the PCs going to investigate some bandits who have nothing to do with anything. Or, if you're sandboxing it, your heroes show up in a town known for bland crumblecake.

I can picture so many new people getting bored with this adventure by the time they get to the crypt scenario (which is in chapter 6).

No Demon Lord

When you think of Elemental Evil, chances are the first image that pops into your head is the iconic cover of Gary Gygax & Frank Mentzer's Temple of Elemental Evil. That cover depicts a temple with piles of demonic carvings on it.

This adventure has shed the entire association with a demon lord (it was Zuggtmoy in TOEE). I can see why, as the four princes and prophets are more than enough villains for one adventure.

But to me, TOEE has to have a demon lord in it. Zuggtmoy's area in the original TOEE was in my opinion the best part about the whole dungeon. Zuggtmoy was pretty much the final villain. She was weird and gygaxian.

To drop the demonic element feels weird to me. It's not the end of the world or anything, but the exclusion of a demon lord makes this feel less "D&D" to me.

It's Not Set in Greyhawk

Again, not a big deal, but I'd have preferred if this was set in Greyhawk. There's just something about the Realms that rubs me the wrong way. Elemental Evil should have Hommlet, Nulb and the Circle of Eight involved in some way.

The Shiny Paper

I'm literally the only person who cares about this, but they used shiny paper for this book. I wish they had stuck with the more crusty paper they used in Tyranny of Dragons. My man-fingers smear the ink on these shiny pages.

The Good Things About Princes of the Apocalypse

Piles of Content

As I mentioned earlier, this adventure has a ton of stuff. It feels like much more material than in the two Tyranny of Dragons books combined. There's a ton of adventures, piles of great new spells, cool monsters and really great magic items. They somehow even squeezed in a few pages of sketches and designs!

Cool Artifacts

There's a ton of magic items for me to hand out. That was a big beef I had with Tyranny - no magic items. This adventure is full of cool items. You've got the four artifacts, and then major dwarven relics like Orcsplitter and The Lost Helm.

Great Dungeons

Once you get your players to the elemental dungeons and nodes, they are really good. Each area has a pile of cool ideas. I really admire the creativity that went into each place. I don't know why, but I really get a kick out of the idea of a water cult knight riding a shark and trying to run a PC through with a lance.

Tons of Art

Another complaint I had with Tyranny was that there wasn't much art. Princes is absolutely overloaded with art. It is much appreciated! It helps me describe stuff and get a clear picture of what is going on.

The drawback here is that while there is much more art in this book than in the Tyranny of Dragons books, the Princes art doesn't match the quality of the Tyranny art. There's a lot of really bland depictions of stuff, like the brown depiction of Red Larch on page 23. It's not bad, but it's not inspiring at all. It looks more like an old west town than anything. Compare it to the picture of Xonthal's Tower in Rise of Tiamat.

The Nodes

They made elemental nodes! The biggest disappointment to me in the original TOEE adventure was the fact that the elemental nodes were "do it yourself" kits. The nodes are the coolest idea, and it was annoying that they didn't bother to detail them. Each of the nodes in this adventure really use the associated element to the fullest. The authors did a great job.


Overall

Princes of the Apocalypse is a good adventure organized extremely poorly. The lower-level scenarios are really dull, but ultimately the good ideas in the main dungeons make this one worth running. This adventure is especially useful to those of you looking for material to steal for your home-brewed campaign.

This page is what will hopefully be a useful guide for Dungeon Masters running the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure Princes of the Apocalypse.

I will be updating this page often as I run the adventure for my group, just like I did with my Tyranny of Dragons guide. There will likely be mistakes and errors, so please bear with me. This will be a "living" document for a few months.

This has tons of spoilers, so players please keep out. Feel free to email me with links or ideas.



Official Elemental Evil Links

Elemental Evil Player's Companion - New spells and races, completely free!
Mike Schley's Maps - They are awesome, cheap and very useful.
Sean Macdonald's Maps - Also awesome, cheap and very useful.

My Elemental Evil Articles

The History of Elemental Evil - I did my best to give a synopsis of each elemental evil D&D product
A Guide to Imix - A history of the elemental prince of fire.
My Review of Princes of the Apocalypse - It is certainly thorough.

Where is the Dessarin Valley?

This adventure takes place in the Dessarin Valley area. The heroes start off in the town of Red Larch. Red Larch is about 100 miles northeast of Waterdeep (which was featured heavily in the Tyranny of Dragons storyline). Here's a map:


To Sandbox or Not to Sandbox?

Ogremoch

This adventure is something of a "sandbox" - the heroes are free to wander and stumble on adventure hooks. You as DM will need to decide if you want to let your players roam or if you want to organize it in a more linear fashion. If you are going to go the sandbox route, make sure to familiarize yourself with the NPCs of Red Larch, as they have a ton of hooks which can send your party in many different directions.

The main thing to keep in mind if you are going to let your players free roam, is that it is likely they will head to Beliard once they find out that that is the last place the delegates were seen at. What happens if the players head there is covered on page 42.

The Mirabar Delegation

This is the thing that has confused me the most about this adventure, so I am going to try and put all the information right here for all of us to use as a resource. The delegation is the main hook that leads the heroes into the whole elemental evil plot.

What the Heroes Know: A delegation was traveling from Mirabar to Waterdeep. It stopped in a tiny village called Beliard (see page 33 for a description of Beliard, and page 42 for what happens when the PCs go there).  The delegation was last seen at the west end of the stone bridge, turning south to proceed overland through the heart of the Sumber Hills. It has been a month, and the delegation has not turned up.

What Happened: According to Bruldenthar's tale (on page 67), the earth cultists ambushed the Mirabar delegation and killed most of the guards. Air cultists attacked and stole Deseyna from the earth cultists.The earth cult brought the rest of the delegates to the Sacred Stone Monastery and the earth temple below. From there, the poor delegates were further snatched by various cults to be imprisoned, put to work, or sacrificed.

Many of the delegates' locations are revealed on page 115, "Saving the Delegates". It says Teresiel is in The Weeping Colossus room W17, but there is no W17 on the map.

Where the Heroes Can Find the Delegates: The factions are interested in different delegates, which is covered on page 41. This is the delegation:

Bruldenthar: A shield dwarf historian who was transporting his collection of manuscripts to Waterdeep . His 5 books about Delzoun are now in the possession of water cultist Shoalar Quanderil, who can be encountered in "Womford Rats" (page 43) or in Rivergard Keep (page 56, K12). Bruldenthar is imprisoned in the Sacred Stone Monastery (page 67, M19).

Teresiel: A moon elf from Silverymoon. Has a coded Lords' Alliance document. She also has magical seeds that the Emerald Enclave wants to bring to Goldenfields. According to page 115, she is in the Weeping Colossus, room W17. But there is no W17. I don't see her anywhere. It seems like you could just put her in the prison, which is room W6 on page 144.

Rhundorth: A shield dwarf from Mirabar. Has a coded Lords' Alliance document. Rhundorth is in the Black Geode page 140, room G15. He is being forced to make weapons

Deseyna Majarra: A noble from Waterdeep. Has a coded Lords' Alliance document. She is in the Howling Caves page 126, room N17. She will be tied to a rock column and sacrificed if our heroes aren't quick on their feet.

The body of a knight: This corpse is of a Knight of Samular killed by orcs at the Spine of the World. The corpse is to be interred with honor at Summit Hall, which is detailed on page 36 and 43. I am having trouble finding out the fate of this body.

There's evidence of who else was on the caravan:

• A male dwarf in artisan robes: A dead body found in "Shallow Graves" on page 43. It seems like this is an assistant of Rhundorth.
• A female human warrior dressed in a red surcoat with a black axe: A dead body found in "Shallow Graves" on page 43. Probably the captain of the guards.
• A dozen more soldiers in black surcoats with red axes: More dead bodies found on the road where the delegation was attacked.

The Factions

The five factions are a part of this adventure. That's the Harpers, the Lords' Alliance, the Emerald Enclave, the Order of the Gauntlet and the Zhentarim. There's one representative of each faction in Red Larch, and more spread throughout the region. Here they are in one easy cheat sheet:

Harpers

• (Triboar) Darathra Shendrel, Lord Protector of Triboar
• (Red Larch) Endrith Vallivoe (page 29, area 22): Merchant. A shy, scuttling man, not cut out for "derring-do".

Emerald Enclave

• (Red Larch) Haeleeya Hanadroum (page 27, area 15): Owner of the bath house/dress shop. Caters to local women seeking dresses for special occasions. She hears a lot of gossip. 
• (Goldenfields) Abbot Ellardin Darovik in Goldenfields
• (Dellmon Ranch) Dreena Dellmon (page 165): A young druid.
• Flamerin Verminbane (page 165): A lightfoot halfling scout, delelgate to the elves of the High Forest.

Lords' Alliance

• (Red Larch) Helvur and Maegla Tarnlar (page 25, area 7): Clothiers. Helvur acts snobby to everyone but fellow members of the Lords' Alliance. Maegla is a sharp businesswoman.
• (Yartar) Nestra Ruthiol, Waterbaron of Yartar

Order of the Gauntlet

• (Red Larch) Imdarr Ralvaunder (page 22, area 1): Priest of Tempus. A stern man keenly interested in news.
• Erned Stoutblade (page 165): A Tethyrian human knight, really hates orcs.

Zhentarim 

• (Red Larch) Magobarl Lorren (page 25, area 8): Town Baker. Thin, energetic, loves gossip.
• (Bargewright Inn) Nalaskur Thaelond (page 160, "New Management"): Innkeeper, doesn't trust his employees.
• (Bargewright Inn) Inglor Brathren (page 161): Dwarf handyman.

Listing of Scenarios by Level

I have gone through the book and found the assorted dungeons, adventures and encounters and have tried to sort them in order of when they should be used (if you want to use everything - many of the chapter 6 mini-adventures are very optional). This is a work in progress, as so many things are spread out throughout the book. Here is what I have come up with:

Level 1:

Red Larch Flavor (page 41): This kicks off the adventure.

Bears and Bows (page 149): Bandits and a caged bear.
Haunted Tomb (page 149) Small dungeon with undead.
Necromancer's Cave (page 151) Dungeon with undead and a necromancer.

Level 2:

Tomb of Moving Stones (page 153): Dungeon underneath Red Larch with links to the Earth Cult.

Level 3:

Skyriders (page 45): Air cult skyriders attack the PCs.
The Sighing Valley (page 50): The PCs will have go through the valley to get to Feathergale Spire.
Feathergale Spire (pg 46): Air cult outpost.
New Management (page 160): The PCs get involved with an inn and the zhentarim.
Reaver Ambush (page 45): Water cult bandits on the trail between Red Larch and the Ironford Bridge.

Level 4:

Rivergard Keep (pg 52): Water cult outpost.
The Spy's Letter (page 75): A letter the PCs can find in Rivergard Keep may expose a spy in Red Larch.
Iceshield Orcs (page 163): Orc invaders.
Tremors (page 44): Two ankhegs jump the party on the barren countryside.

Level 5:

Sacred Stone Monastery (pg 59): Earth cult outpost
The Long Road (page 166): Escort a caravan to Triboar
Fiery Fangs (page 45): Hell hounds with iron collars hunt the heroes.

Level 6:

Curse of the Fire Witch (page 167): A trap set by earth cultists
Scarlet Moon Hall (pg 69): Fire cult outpost
Temple of Howling Hatred (pg 78): Air temple

Level 7:

Temple of the Crushing Wave (page 84): Water temple
Dire Tidings (page 76): The cult uses an orb on a town

Level 8:

Vale of Dancing Waters: A dwarven shrine has been overtaken
Temple of Black Earth (page 95): Earth temple
Reckless Hate (page 76): Cultists attack the party's home

Level 9:

Dark Dealings in Yartar (page 175): A devastation orb is being sold in Yartar
Temple of Eternal Flame (page 103): Fire temple
Race to Destruction (page 77): The party is lured into a trap

Level 10:

Rundreth Manor (page 179): A haunted house
Fane of the Eye (page 115): A common area/dungeon for members of all of the cults

Level 11:

Halls of the Hunting Axe (page 180): Quest to find a tomb
The Howling Caves (page 123): Air node
Downpour (page 113): The water cult creates a torrential downpour

Level 12:

The Plunging Torrents (page 128): Water Cult
Tortured Earth (page 113): Earthquake/purple worm
Counsel of Despair (page 113): The Cult has infiltrated Westbridge
The Black Geode (page 135): Earth node
Haayon the Punisher (page 114): A cloud giant tries to take over a faction of scattered cultists

Level 13:

Burning Hills (page 113): The fire cult traps the PCs in a raging forest fire
The Weeping Colossus (page 141): Fire node

That's where I'm at so far. Check back again soon, I'll be plugging away at this thing.

I am going through one of those campaign-planning phases again, where I do a lot of research for a campaign that may never take place. I am going to attempt to create a reference for the city of Sigil, which is the extra-planar city that serves as the home base for the Planescape setting.

I am using material from these sources:

• Planescape Campaign Setting
• In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil
• Planescape: Torment

The point here is to take the essential material out of those sources to create a brief outline that can be used by a DM to get a handle on the city without having to do hours of research. It's pretty much my notes on the city that I will refer to in play when the heroes are in Sigil. I tried my best to use as few words as possible.

I would highly suggest that you play Planescape: Torment, if you're OK with a computer RPG game that involves a ton of reading. The characters are great, the details are insanely deep, and it gives you a feel for how the city should be depicted. I took notes as I played, so that I can use all of the coolest locations, like the Smoldering Corpse bar and the Curiosity Shoppe.

Sigil is built on the inside of a hollowed-out donut. Gravity works there in such a way that you can walk all the way up the side to the ceiling. So if you are on a Sigil street and look up, there's city above you.

There is a hovering luminescence above the buildings that creates day and night, though much of it is the gloom of twilight (Noon is known as "Peak", and midnight is known as "Anti-Peak"). There's no moon or stars, obviously, but the twinkling lights of the city above create a similar effect. Brownish rain is frequent and fog in the streets is common.

Important Things to Know

Sigil is Run by The Lady of Pain: She is around 15 feet tall with blades growing out of her face. It is rumored that she was once a demon lord. She doesn't speak, she just drifts down streets and those who engage her suffer her gaze, which causes cuts to begin to open on their body. She also has the power to send enemies to The Mazes.

The Mazes: A wasting maze that is a demi-plane, a copy of Sigil and in the Ethereal plane. Things can get in to a maze, but they can't get out. Food and water appear. The prisoner knows there's a portal out but can't find it or activate it.

"Powers" Not Welcome: Gods/demon lords/primordials are physically unable to step foot in Sigil. Their priests and proxies come to Sigil to try to figure out a way to remedy this.

Factions: Sigil is full of factions devoted to all sorts of things. I find it hard to keep them all straight. This site has a faction index.


Portals

The City of Sigil is full of portals in all sorts of weird places. Each portal has a gate key, which can be things like a rose from a specific mortal world, or a sword - often the gate key is connected to the plane the portal leads to. Portals are the only way in and out of Sigil. Often, a person will accidentally activate a portal and stumble into some other plane or world.

Nobody knows how to make a portal, except maybe the Lady of Pain. Even wish spells can't make portals.

There's three types of portals:

• Permanent Portals: These don't change, they always go to and from the same place.
• Temporary Portals: Disappear after being used once or twice.
• Shifting Portals: These portals move on a schedule throughout the city. It might be in an arch n one section for a few days, and then in a merchant's house for a week. It will take a PC to one plane like the Shadowfell for a few days, and then to the Elemental Plane of fire for a week.

The Law

The Lady of Pain doesn't care about murders or theft.  She only cares about things like:

• Someone killing a dabus.
• Someone trying to help a god or demon lord enter Sigil.
• Rebellion against her rule.

She might show up and cut you up or send you to the Mazes. If not, you might still have to deal with the factions.

The Harmonium

Three factions have taken it upon themselves to form a "wheel of justice". The Harmonium makes the arrest, The Fraternity of Order conduct the trial, and the Mercykillers carry out the sentence.

• The Harmonium: They paladins and fighters who wear red armor. They believe that to create universal harmony, everyone has to think and act like they do. They use shifter's manacles on their captives - shackles with a magic effect that prevents teleporting and causes those who try to teleport to take d10 damage. They wield planar man-catchers with the same spell effect.
• The Fraternity of Order: They search for order in all thing, obsessed with learning the laws and loopholes of the universe.
• The Mercykillers: These people think "mercy" is an excuse created by the weak and criminals. Every crime must be punished according to the law - there is no such thing as "extenuating circumstances". They can cast detect lie once per die. They run the Prison.

Court

If a PC has to go to court, they can hire an advocate for 100 to 1,000 gp (usually a tiefling or devil). Often the advocate can bribe an official or work out a blackmail scheme to the PCs' benefit.

• Punishment for lesser crimes are usually fines.
• Thieves are whipped.
• Blasphemers (those who dare openly worship the Lady of Pain, for example) have their tongues pierced with a red-hot poker.
• Those who tamper with portals suffer Strappado (ugh).
• Deserters, embezzlers and murderers are hanged.

Public Executions

Death by wyrm

It goes like this. The Mercykillers bring out the condemned in a two-wheeled cart. Citizens pelt them with rocks. They are brought to the Petitioners' Square. The prisoners get to make a short final speech, which the crowd buys meat pies and pamphlets.There's three methods of execution:

• By the Noose: The victim pays the executioner to set the knot to the side of the neck for a quick death.
• By the Sword: This form of execution is for people of status who did something like not paying taxes or libeling the Lady of Pain. The executioners use two sword/cleavers, known as "Scythe" and "Raven" to behead the victims. Fun fact: If the victim isn't dead after three slices, he or she is pardoned and set free.
• By the Wyrm: This one is rare and considered a public holiday. The victim is usually a traitor to the city or a dabus-killer. The victim is tied to a post and fed to the Mercykiller Wyrm.

The Mercykiller Wyrm: The Mercykillers have a "mascot", a pet wyvern with stubby wings (it can only fly for a minute or two). It has a venomous bite that causes delirium, which makes it easier to extract confessions from people. The venom is a main ingredient for potions of truth.

Most of those who are executed are put on pikes and displayed. The worst executed criminals have their bodies placed in iron cages where the city's ravens pick at their remains.


Other Things That Make Sigil Different

Money: Merchants accept any coins, as long as they are made of gold or silver. So your PCs will likely end up with money from Krynn, Toril, and who knows where else in their pouch. "Sure it may be minted in the likeness of hideous Juiblex, but gold is gold."

Razorvine: This stuff grows in Sigil. It's a vine with black leaves that are a sharp as a blade (it does 2d3 damage if touched!). It grows fast - a foot per day. It becomes dull and brittle if cut.

A Dabus

Dabus: Blue-skinned humanoids who hover and make repairs on the city. Some may be agents of the Lady of Pain. They communicate by creating hovering symbols above them. They trim razorvine. The Helm of the Dabus is a helmet allows the wearer to communicate as the dabus do - symbols hovering in the air. Only one of these are known to exist.

Most people get around on foot (there's not many horses) or by sedan chair. It is literally a chair that fits two people, carried on the backs of four burly humanoids.

Cranium Rats: Sigil has a lot of vermin. Rats, wererats and cranium rats. Cranium Rats share a group mind. The more there are in a swarm, the smarter they are. 100 cranium rats in a swarm have a 20 intelligence. Swarms have spells, can use the mind flayer mindblast power, and even gain magic resistance when the swarm nears 100 rats. It is believed that they refer to themselves as "The Us" and that they wage war with Ilsensine, god of the mindflayers.

Two Special Spells for Sigil:

• Warp Sense: This is a level 2 wizard spell that lasts 1 round per level. Range: touch. The recipient can concentrate and see portals. He or she can then roll (Arcana?) to see if they can sense where the portal leads and what the key is.
• Surelock: This is a level 4 priest spell. Casting time: 1 hour. Duration: 1 day/level. This spell protects an area against planar portals.

Locations in Sigil

The city is divided into wards. I am going to describe each ward and list a few interesting locations.

The Lady's Ward

The richest and safest section of Sigil. Home to the Barracks, the Court, the Prison and the Armory. There's a statue of Bigby in this ward.

The Prison: Home to the Mercykillers.

The City Court: Judges hear cases here. There's a vast library of laws.

The City Barracks: Home to the Harmonium.

(inn/tavern) Fortune's Wheel: A major social hotspot, owned by Shemeshka the Marauder. It is divided into a few sections:

• The Dragon Bar: A vast common room/tavern. There's this huge carved dragon head that can breathe a black cloud on unruly patrons.
• The Dicing Cup: Where wealthy people gamble large sums of money. It is watched over by an invisible mage and two gargoyles. There's an albino musician named Estrella with silver hair who often performs.
• The Bear-Baiting Room: There's a pit on the map. I have no idea.
• Fortune's Wheel:  The minimum bet is 10 gp.  You spin the wheel and hope it lands on a gold square. Most of the squares are black and pay out nothing. The mage's prize is a relic imbued with arcane power.
• The Azure Iris: An inn on the top of the building with magically warded rooms to prevent scrying or eavesdropping.

The menu includes Abyssal Beef (5 gp), Divine Dogmeat (3 gp), Hangman's Ham (2 gp)

NPCs

Shemeshka the Marauder: There is a massive article on her in Dungeon Magazine #205. An arcanaloth (or raavasta) involved in everything from slave-trade to ownership of devil festhalls. She specializes in selling secrets and is an amoral liar/manipulator. She actually wears a sort of crown of razorvine on her head.

She runs The Mutual Trade Association and the Knights of the Cross-Trade and has a hand in the the Order of Master Clerks and Scribes, the Runner and Escort Guild, the Entertainer’s Guild, and the Adventurer’s Guild

The Hive Ward
This is a grim and poor place, full of thieves, pawnbrokers, secret slave markets and the insane. There's even gladiatorial pits. There are a lot of demons and devils here, quietly waging the blood war in back alleys. The entire ward is home to the Xaositects, a faction of the insane.

The Mortuary: This vast complex is home to the Dustmen, who inter the city's corpses here. It is said to have portals to every plane. This is the place that Planescape: Torment begins in.

The Gatehouse Night Market: Thieves sell goods to fences, who sell the stuff to other people who ship it out of Sigil. You could come here to try to buy back something stolen from you.

Smoldering Corpse Bar: This bar has a poor wizard hovering in the air, on fire. He is cursed. This is an awesome location overloaded with cool NPCs, including Dak'kon the githzerai.

Fell's Tattoos: Fell is a dabus that everyone avoids. He makes magic tattoos which could be a really cool magic item for your PCs.

NPCs

Kylie: She is a tout (a guide to the city), a whip-smart tiefling and an NPC featured in a number of Planescape products. She seemingly knows everyone in Sigil and wins people over with her irrepressible spirit. She has a pet named Dib. It's an ethyk (a cute, furry little one-eyed rabbit/raccoon creature).

Lower Ward

This area is home to the city's craftsmen. It is full of warehouses, smoky mills, forges and workshops. There are a lot of portals here.

The Great Foundry: Home of the godsmen. They make anything that can be fashioned out of iron.

(tavern) The Styx Oarsmen: You can't get in here without a password. Most of the patrons are demons to meet and do business. This is a dark, dangerous place run by a githzerai named Zegonz Vlaric who has one arm frozen in a clawlike pose. He was crippled by "do-gooder" adventurers and hates them.

The Friendly Fiend: A magic shop run by A'kin the Friendly Fiend (see below).

The Ditch: The only large body of water in Sigil, a foul and reeking morass that corrodes corpses within hours of being dumped. Wererats gather here to receive orders from their leader, Tattershade. Metal refuse is dumped here by the dabus.

Society of the Luminiferous Aether: A gentlemen's club for working mages. Only members are let in by the doorman - Gamnesto the Vile, a bound gehreleth. The place has a library and a list of portals and keys that work in Sigil and the planes. Membership fee: 10,000 gp!

(tavern) The Face of Gith: A githzerai establishment. They drinks silently and sullenly. There's a sealed blob of primal chaos from Limbo there. Some spellcasters can shape it into images and creatures to amuse the patrons.

NPCs

A'kin the Friendly Fiend: A raavasta who always seems a little too happy. He is connected to Shemeshka as both a friend and an enemy. She has burned down his shop 3 times in the last 100 years.

Rule-of-Three: He is a cambion who may be linked to the drmon lore Graz'zt. He often disguises himself in the form of a githzerai. He gives three answers to every question. He also insists on being paid for information with three payments, like one gold, one silver and one copper or a joke, a proverb and an insult.

Clerk's Ward

Home to bureaucrats, sages and scribes. Clerks, shopkeepers and moneylenders live here. There's a 200 foot tall statue called the Trioptic Nic'Epona (a 3-eyed horse). Each of the statue's eyes are made of a certain type of gem. If you hold a similar gem in your hand and step on the base of the statue and speak a command word (which is only known to a few dignitaries), you will teleport to Elysium, Celestia or a Prime Material Plane.

The Hall of Records: Home to the Fated and the hub of Sigil's financial world. In the adjacent Hall of Information, there's this door with nine levers. Pulling them in the right sequence gives you access to a vault full of good stuff: piles of gold from fees and bundles of documents that implicate Sigil officials in all sorts of crimes. Pulling the wrong sequence of levers sucks you into the negative material plane.

The Hall of Speakers: Home to The Sign of One. This is where the factions debate laws and feud with one another.

(Inn) The Whole Note Inn: Menu: Carceri Snails (7 sp), Poached Stirge Eggs (5sp), Glorium Ox (8 sp), Goat Filet in Strawberry Sauce (6 sp), Pickled Eel and Mustard Pie (6 sp), Boiled Shank of Bebelith (5 sp).

Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts: A brothel with workers who converse with the patrons. There's a secret area where the workers have these sensory orbs that contain their thoughts and feelings.

Civic Festhall: It's a concert hall, opera house, museum, tavern, and faction headquarters of the Sensates. It has these public and private sensoriums, where you can touch a magic stone and experience things like: Frightened exhilaration, sheer wonder, lycanthropy and supernatural lust (!).

Curiosity Shoppe: This place sells tons of cool items. It is run by a nasty alu-fiend with blue skin and yellow eyes named Vrishilka. The magic items in here are awesome and unique. There's a rune-covered ale stein that keeps drinks ice cold, a monster jug (with a monster trapped inside) and a chocolate quasit - a quasit magically turned to chocolate.

NPCs

Estavan the Merchant Lord: An oni merchant lord. Ostentatious, manipulative and merciless. He often wears a red silk kimono and a gold necklace.

Jeena Ealy: The most popular author in Sigil. She writes true life adventure books.She hires freelance adventurers for research. She is planning books on the river styx and the beastlands. Some works include:

• Death in the Norns: Adventures in the Outlands
• In Darkest Sigil: Chronicles the horrid conditions in the Hive.
• Other books include a history of the blood war, and a study of yugoloths.

The Guildhall and Market Wards

There are permanent portals here to cities of the planes. This is where you come to buy stuff.

The Great Gymnasium: Home of the Transcendent Order. This place has baths, steam rooms, massage tables, etc. It's a place for people to relax, and also a neutral ground for hostile parties (weapons and spells are not allowed in here).

The Flame Pits: This bath house is run by a sharp-tongued githzerai named Laril Zasskos. This place has exotic baths: lava pools for elementals, scouring whirlwinds, rank ooze, and pure water.

The Great Bazaar: Home the the Free League, a great place to buy stuff and get information.

Imel's Happy Tongue: A restaurant that sometimes sells cheeses: Warrior's Cheese (2 gp), Bytopian Red (1 gp), Tiefling's Delight (2 gp), Death Cheese (made from catoblepas milk! 20 gp).

Ensin's Discount Elixirs: Ensin, a mage, brews potions with cheap components. No refunds! He makes concoctions such as:

• Potion of Small Animal Control (50 gp) - 1 to 4 rats, etc.
• Potion of Limited Invisibility (50 gp) - Only works at night or in a dark room.
• Potion of Limited Healing (30 gp) - Heals d6 damage
• Potion of Blue Hue (10 gp) - Turns you light blue.
• Potion of Drowning Resistance (75 gp) - You can breathe water for 10 minutes

Zakk's Corpse Curing: Mhasha Zakk is a taxidermist that will stuff anything. It's a good place to dump a body or make a little extra money. She pays 2 gp for a dog or cat, and 20 for a man-sized creature (or a man).

I've mentioned a few times that I have had a hard time reading this adventure. I finally finished my review of Princes of the Apocalypse, and started a guide to it. That means that I learned a lot over the past few weeks.

One thing I saw was that I didn't handle the whole delegation thing well. The entire initial hook to this adventure is that there is a missing delegation and the factions want to find out what happened to certain people or items. This investigation can lead the heroes to Beliard or Summit Hall, all sorts of places.

It was quite an ordeal poring over the book and finding out where the delegation ended up. One thing I could never find was this dead body that was meant to be brought to Summit Hall, home of the Knights of Samular. I scoured the book, I even asked people on twitter... as far as I can tell, the book gives the hook for the dead knight but never actually resolves it.

So I decided to take it into my own hands. I thought it would be cool if, when the delegation was attacked, that the knight rose up as undead and fought them. The skeletal knight now wanders the land, drawn to Summit Hall but only vaguely sure of how to get there.

Symbol of Tyr

The Knights worship Tyr, so I read up on Tyr as well as the Knights of Samular.

My goal for tonight was to have the heroes befriend the knight, go to Dellmon ranch and do that whole Iceshield Orcs side scenario in chapter 6. Then, time permitting, they can take the knight to Summit Hall to his final resting place. It is there that they can also learn about the location of the earth cult.

The Party     

• Elf Rogue: Played by a 4th grader, her character's name is Lucky and she has a black cat named "Bad Luck". 
• Dwarf Cleric: In real life, played by Lucky's dad. He has a scottish accent and worships Ilmater.
• Tiefling Sorcerer: Middle Schooler. His character is apparently a jester. He uses wild magic and his skin is blue.
• Drow Rogue: Middle Schooler. Wants to be evil, but Adventurer's League rules restrict this. Has a dog.
• Goliath Barbarian: Middle Schooler. Really nice guy.
• Human Bard: The player is about 25 years old, knows the rules pretty well. 
• Human Paladin: Worships Helm. Played by the bard's dad, who played old D&D and is new to 5e.
• Human Rogue: A new player. Taking to the game very well.

The Knight of Samular

The adventurers had just taken down the water cult at Rivergard Keep. They rescued a druid named Okobo, an NPC from the Neverwinter MMO. She claimed that the wind talked to her, and that she believed it was actually Chan talking to her. Chan is the archomental of good air, the eternal foe of Yan C Bin, the evil air archomental.

Before Okobo was captured, she had been looking for help. Iceshield orcs were rampaging to the north, burning and looting farmsteads. The heroes agreed to go there and help Okobo try to take down the orcs.

They traveled northeast. After a day or so, Okobo sensed danger on the wind. A cardinal landed on the dwarf's shoulder (I like to have an animal interact with the PCs just prior to an encounter with a cult, to sort of show that nature is on the side of the heroes in their battle against elemental evil).

They spotted a skeletal knight in a field. In the sky was a feathergale knight riding a giant vulture, and three hurricanes gliding on their wingwear. They were clearly about to attack the knight.

The air cultists were trying to recover the knight for Aerisi Kalenoth, who was none too happy about the destruction of Feathergale Spire. The knight was the only part of the delegation that had slipped through the cult's grasp.

Crazy Okobo told the heroes to help the knight, and they did. The heroes are now 5th level, so they kicked some butt here (I leveled them a bit too fast, but now they are going to be level 5 for quite a while). The sorcerer caused a wild surge that hit the bad guys with lightning that did 4d10 damage, which shortened the combat considerably.

The we played Dungeons & Friends. The heroes tried to make friends with the skeleton. The knight is based on the skeleton from the D&D cartoon.

The Knight

I decided that he was missing his right hand, just like his god Tyr. I did this just to see what the PCs thought of this. Once they realized the knight was a follower of Tyr, they theorized that knights were required to cut off their own hand to prove their devotion to their god.

They befriended him in a lackluster skill challenge - I'll need to revamp these considerably. The way I am doing it is not working to my liking.

The skeleton knight joined the party. They saw on his tabard a symbol: a crossed sword and torch (the symbol of the knights of samular) but they didn't know what it meant.

The Burning Farm

They continued on and came upon a burning farm. There was a woman in the barn calling for help. Lucky ran in to the barn. I added in a couple of "traps": A beam that falls from the ceiling and incapacitating smoke. Lucky navigated both traps and rescues the woman. The woman told the heroes that orcs had taken her husband and all their stuff.

The cleric healed the woman (named Maygan) and followed the tracks. After a half hour, the heroes found the orcs camped in what would turn out to be a fateful encounter.

Squirrel Man

The adventurers jumped the orcs. One of the rogues, played by the new player, climbed a tree and aimed his crossbow at an orc. I told him that a squirrel was in the tree, worried that the rogue was going to take it's acorns. The squirrel was frantically stuffing acorns into it's mouth.

I did not know until today that the reason that this new player wanted to play D&D was because he heard a story from our Tyranny of Dragons campaign. When the heroes in that game fought the green dragon Chuth, a rogue had impaled a squirrel on an arrow and shot it at the dragon (rolling a critical hit).

The new player lit up and excitedly snatched the squirrel. He wanted to shoot the squirrel at an orc's mouth, hoping that the orcs would suffocate or something. He rolled a natural 20.

He shot the squirrel and the bolt (The squirrel rode the bolt) into the orc's mouth. The damage was enough to kill the orc. The orc fell to the ground and the squirrel exploded out of the orc's skull, covered in blood and squeaking triumphantly.

I know this is fairly implausible, even for D&D, but everyone was laughing so much that I just went with it and figured I'd come up with an explanation later. At the moment we decided that the squirrel truly hated orcs and had waited a long time to take them on.

The adventurers finished off the orcs. Druid Okobo spoke with the squirrel and befriended it. The new guy asked the squirrel to join the party. He agreed to do so. The new player named the little fellow: Squirrel Man.

The heroes rescued the captured husband. In the adventure, it's the wife who gets captured and the man who is in the barn. I switched them, because orcs taking the woman and leaving the man sort of implies orc breeding, and I don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole in this group.

Dellmon Ranch

The adventurers continued on to a place where farmers had holed up: Dellmon Ranch. About 40 farmers were there in a little compound with a wall made up of logs tied together with twine. The emerald enclave had sent for help, but it had yet to arrive.

The farmers warned the heroes that a horde of orcs were near, and would likely attack soon. A couple PCs wanted to make friends with certain NPCs, and did so.

The adventurers set themselves up in the complex, and waited.

The Initial Surge

An hour or so passed, and then the orcs emerged from the forest. They gathered 100 feet from the northernmost building. Two heroes were on the roof of that building. To their horror, they watched as the orcs threw a total of 40 javelins (!!) at the compound. 10 of the javelins went at the two guys on the roof. Then, the orcs fled back into the forest as the PCs returned fire.

A javelin hit and killed one of Kerbin Dellmon's sons (A number of PCs and NPCs were out in the middle of the compound and were sitting ducks for javelins). The cleric had a spell that saved him. The Dellmons were most grateful.

There was more waiting. The heroes huddled with the NPCs and decided to stay inside the buildings, to protect themselves from the javelins.

The new player had druid Okobo to ask Squirrel Man to go on a recon mission. At this point, the party had been talking about Squirrel Man as if he was Rambo, complete with a red headband. Squirrel Man of course agreed, and set out alone.

I had the new player roll for Squirrel Man's stealth checks and etc., and his dice were on fire. Squirrel Man found the orcs in the woods. They were carving up sticks to make more javelins. The squirrel saw the leader - an orog. He also spotted a shaman/priestess (I had half of the orcs be female - blue-skinned with long black hair in a topknot). The shaman was tending to some of the orcs' wounds.

Orog

Squirrel Man found one orc away from the others, sharpening a javelin. Squirrel Man decided to try to trip the man in such a way that he might fall on his own javelin. More dice were rolled. Another natural 20! The orc tripped and was impaled on his own javelin! He died. The players at the table could not get enough of this.

Squirrel Man returned and told Druid Okobo the news.

The Orcs Return

20 minutes later, the orcs emerged from the forest and heaved 40 more javelins. But this time, everyone was safe inside the buildings. Twenty of the orcs drew melee weapons, roared and charged. Once they got within 40 feet of Dellmon Ranch, the heroes took action. The bard cast a shatter spell that exploded in their midst, sending orcs flying in all directions. Ranged attacks were fired out of windows.

The new guy, Lucky and the barbarian hopped out of the ranch and faced off against about 18 orcs! Other players tried to talk them out of it, but they didn't listen. I knew this was big trouble for the party. Four orcs rushed the new guy, who fired a crossbow bolt at an orc. Squirrel Man rode the bolt onto the orc. The orcs closed in on the rogue and cut him down almost instantly (they do 9 points of damage each).

Four more orcs charged Lucky. Lucky's real life dad cast a sanctuary spell on her, which saved her from them (the spell prevented most of them from attacking her).

The barbarian stood in front of the Dellmon Ranch entrance. He rightly assumed that the orcs were going to try to bash in or damage the front gate. The sorcerer cast a cloud of daggers spell in front of the gate, which was very smart. This triggered a wild surge, which turned him into a potted plant for a round. Because he has blue skin, I decided that the plant was blue.

The barbarian is tough and he fended off the orcs, with aid from the bard who hit them with another shatter spell.

A couple of orcs broke through a window in the northern building and attacked the heroes and NPCs in there. A rogue grabbed the potted plant/sorcerer and chucked it at an orc. He rolled (what else?) a natural 20! He caved in the orc's skull and killed it.

A few orcs were slain. The others grabbed the dying rogue as a hostage as they fled back into the woods.

We had to stop there as we ran out of time. I generally hate taking a PC hostage. I had to make a snap decision, and to me it felt like the orcs would do that. I also wanted to have consequences for the fact that a few PCs actually decided to try to fight 17 orcs in melee combat.

Plans For Next Week

Now I have a week to sort of mull over the situation. Squirrel Man is stowed away on an orc and might be able to save the rogue. The rogue had failed his first death save. There's a lot of ways to go - The rogue could get tied up and try to escape with the aid of his squirrel. The heroes could go out there, create a diversion, and save him. Or maybe a hostage exchange of some kind can take place.

I will need to be careful not to let things drag.

I should also note that Lucky was quick to ask the people of Dellmon Ranch why the orcs were attacking. The orcs were sort of displaced by the cult activity and have decided to take the farms, live in them until they are trashed, and then move on. She is a good player like that. She always asks the right questions.

I'm going to have to cook up more realistic rules for the squirrel. I want to keep him fun, but not let it get too cartoonish.

I knew this mini-adventure would be fun. I think the players have really enjoyed it so far.